Human Resources Committee on Dec. 14th, 2010

[Will Falk]

I have two or three comments.

First, the source is “Youth Leaving Care: How Do They Fare?”, September 2005. It's available at www.childhelp.org. You can go through some of my figures. I'll provide that to the committee clerk.

Second, as the Johnston panel did its work, we dug into this issue, Mr. Martin. And we came to the conclusion, particularly in Ontario, that the population we were talking about was so high-risk, was so important to general poverty issues, and was accounting for such a large piece of incarceration and homelessness that if we could tackle it one child at a time, we could make a huge difference.

When we looked to the field, we saw some programs that were really eye-opening. The one I'll highlight for you is Wendy's Wonderful Kids out of the Dave Thomas Foundation. We support that through the Children's Aid Foundation. If you look at their numbers, they do adoptions at between $20,000 and $25,000 a kid. What they do is hire workers and do adoptions. So some of us in the philanthropic community have come to the conclusion that it's a no-brainer to raise money for that. Forget about government doing it. We're now supporting seven workers and just doing it, because you can take kids that are costing $40,000 a year in the system and find them permanent homes at $25,000 a year.

The economics of this are staggering. The money is in the wrong place. We're paying $100,000 a year for some of these kids, keeping them in the proverbial hotel rooms. And we could put the money in a different place.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Mr. Dudding, it sounded as if you had some recommendations that you didn't get to read into the record. Would you mind doing that?

[Peter Dudding]

Sure, I'd be glad to.

The next recommendation was about an enhanced prevention fund for first nations. You probably heard from INAC that they are moving ahead with the enhanced prevention funding. We would suggest that it be done in 2011-12.

The other area that we felt was important was the coordination of federal child and family programs. As it currently stands, there is no coordinating ability among the various government departments, so the establishment of a federal secretariat within a central agency, such as the Privy Council Office, to coordinate federal policy and programs would be a big step forward in enabling us to focus on these kinds of issues.

Thanks.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Just to go back to the question I originally asked, you talked about $25,000. What percentage of the adoption scenario out there is being supported in this way?

[Will Falk]

At the moment, there are seven workers. Two of them are in Windsor. A couple are in Toronto. There is B.C., Nova Scotia, and Alberta.

The Dave Thomas Foundation across the U.S. has shown great success, and these are hard-to-place kids, generally speaking. Wendy's Wonderful Kids is the program.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Thanks, that's all the time.

Mr. Watson.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for appearing today. We appreciate your testimony.

I'm not sure which one of you made the distinction between federal versus national, but I take it that you're both in support of a national adoption strategy. Is that fair to say?

[Peter Dudding]

My recommendation is slightly different, Jeff, in terms of promoting a national knowledge exchange centre. I think the question, in terms of strategy, is always how ambitious one wants to be.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

But the focus of our efforts, ultimately, should be, first of all, a cooperative approach with respect to the provinces and territories. Agreed?

[Peter Dudding]

Yes.

[Will Falk]

Yes.

I said national, Jeff. The reason is that if you look at some of the provinces--Alberta and New Brunswick have come up--Quebec has actually done a really excellent job on EI and family-friendly infertility policies. I think, given that it's a provincial responsibility primarily, it has to be a national program, not a federal program.

That being said, I think that, as with health care, there's a role here for the feds to shine a light on some of what's going on.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Exploring this a little further, it should focus on moving children from state care, if you will, in some form, to adoption permanency. Correct? Is that agreed?

[Will Falk]

Sure.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

It should involve the ministers. And I would presume that the deputy ministers, as well, should have this on their radar screens, in terms of meeting.

[Peter Dudding]

Yes.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Fair enough.

We heard from HRSDC officials that the Child Welfare League is being funded to build a national database. Can you confirm that, first of all? When did that begin? Under what program is it being funded? How much is being funded? And why are you guys building it instead of the government? But that's maybe a different question.

[Peter Dudding]

That would be an overstatement. We're actually being funded under a program called “Every Child Matters: Strengthening Foster Families in Canada”, which is a national foster care development project. I understand it's $600,000 over three years, so $200,000 a year.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

What year did you begin?

[Peter Dudding]

Just this year, 2010. And the exercise, in terms of working with the provinces, is to collect their data for foster care.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

What info will be contained in that database? Is the information easily accessible to you? Is it easily translatable across the different jurisdictions? I think you mentioned SUFA. Would it require a discussion between governments about standardizing language or requirements with respect to this kind of reporting and monitoring?

[Peter Dudding]

It would require major discussions between governments to standardize the information. As it stands, you've got 13 different reports with 13 substantively different definitions.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Switching gears here for a moment, with respect to the establishment of adoption leave, what factors are unique with respect to adoptive caregivers? I'm not talking about the issues of care with respect to the child, but what unique factors, emotional, psychological, or otherwise, are related to adoptive caregiving?

[Will Falk]

I listened carefully to your discussion with officials in the first hour. The thing that was missing there, to me, was the notion of what you do two or three years after the adoption should one of the parents need to leave work to take care of the adopted child. And that happens a lot, folks. The three-year-old will be fine, through four and five, and then you will have to home-school.

My wife home-schooled our son for two full years, with loss of income, during grades one and two. That was okay for my family, but we heard testimony from people who were wiped out by that situation.

If a family is taking over a ward of the state, then you have to provide the backstop and the support, the income support, if that adoption or placement gets into difficulty. And that's not just expenses. That's EI two years after the adoption or placement, because the child has those needs. I don't claim to know how you monitor that, but that's the need you're talking about.

[The Chair, Conservative, Candice Bergen]

Thanks very much, Mr. Falk, and thank you, Mr. Dudding. We appreciate so much your being here. There are a lot more questions we could ask. Unfortunately, our time is up.

We wish you both a very merry Christmas.

We have committee business we need to attend to. We have a motion on the floor. We've got a motion from Monsieur Lessard that we are dealing with. We have 15 minutes to deal with this motion, so I'm hoping we will be able to get through it. I think the clerk handed out the motion to everybody.

We will have to go in camera.

Thank you.

[Proceedings continue in camera]