Youth report on improving the well-being of youth in care
By Adam Diamond and Alicia Venditti, YouthCAN Coordinators

From left: OACAS YouthCAN Coordinators Alicia Venditti, Adam Diamond and Amanda Rose

OACAS/CMHO Joint Youth Conference: Synergy was a huge success. Over 140 youth from across the province came, shared their stories, attended great sessions and made new friends. Youth attended from Children’s Aid Societies (CASs) as well as from Children’s Mental Health Ontario centres.

What does synergy mean anyways? According to dictionary.com, it is “the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects."

Synergy was a great theme for the Joint OACAS/CMHO Conference because youth in care cannot go through life alone. It takes other people including their worker and their agency as a whole to contribute to their lives and to help them grow and become successful adults. This was emphasized throughout the conference and with the Youth Policy Advisory and Advocacy Group (YPAAG) focusing on emotional support.

The Conference was a blast. Our opening motivational speaker was Josh Shipp, a former youth in care from the United States. Josh gave words of inspiration to youth and touched many people there through sharing his experiences growing up. He was humorous yet motivational: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!”. He challenged everyone at the conference by saying, “Don’t be ordinary!”. Uniqueness is important!

The Conference also offered youth a video dance, an amazing talent show, informative sessions, an open forum for youth, plus lots, lots more.

Marc Kielburger, the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Leaders Today and also the Chief Executive Officer of Free The Children, closed the 2008 Joint Conference with an eye-opening presentation about his work and experiences in Africa.

Youth Presentation

Before the closing of the Conference, YPAAG, representing 145 youth at the conference, presented detailed recommendations on how to better prepare and support youth in care for success in life. The recommendations were developed during the three-day conference and built on over two years of advocacy by this group and other youth in care from across Ontario. In the past, youth have been presenting recommendations to improve the child welfare system by asking the question: “What would a good parent do?”. At this year’s conference, they asked: “Who would you call?”. Present were conference attendees, representatives from the Ontario government, CAS and CMHO staff, foster parents and others.

Young people representing Crown wards and former Crown wards in the care of Ontario’s CASs noted that “no other relationship begins with an expiry date” and recommended additional emotional supports and continued service to youth until 25 years of age. Under existing child welfare policy, youth in care are not eligible for service, protection, emotional or financial support beyond the age of 21.

As most youth in care rely on their local CAS as their parent, many expressed their concerns that they would lose the support of their caseworkers, who are for many the only family they have known. They also acknowledge child and youth workers face considerable workloads and carry many cases at a time. YPAAG made recommendations in the areas of emotional support, increasing the age of eligibility for service from 21 to 25 years, educational support and financial assistance.

Recommendations

Emotional Support

• Youth need to have at least one reliable adult that they can call – and reach – when needed. They asked the audience, “Who are YOU going to call?” in a crisis, with good news, when you are broke, or faced with tragedy. Most of them have no one aside from their worker.
  
  
• Reduce the number of youth per worker to a maximum of 15 so that workers can spend more time with older youth.
  
  
• Ensure access to mental health care services – ease the transition between youth and adult systems.
  
  
• Encourage and nurture positive relationships that will last beyond CAS care.
  
  
• Help establish a support network in which all youth feel secure and confident. Costs associated to this network should be fully covered.
  
  
• Provide accessible and welcoming youth spaces at agencies where they can feel belonging and connectedness.

Raise the age of eligibility to 25

• Change the age of protection from 16 to 18 years.
  
  
• Extend the ability of agencies to provide monthly allowances from 21 to 25 years of age.
  
  
• Extend the age of eligibility for children’s mental health from 18 to 25 years – youth are just starting to deal with their issues at this time.

Other recommendations in the areas of finance and educational supports include:

• Extend full health and dental benefits until the age of 25.
  
  
• Ensure safe, appropriate and affordable housing for all youth. Youth in care should not live in shelters.
  
  
• Provide help with financial planning and investments to youth to live within their allowances and earnings.
  
  
• Ensure that youth programming is in the core budget of every Children’s Aid Society, and is not the first service cut when budgets are limited.
  
  
• Help youth find employers and develop future employment opportunities.
  
  
• Seek out corporations to collaborate to offer scholarships and student aid programs.
  
  
• Make educational assessments for these youth a top priority.
  
  

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