OACAS 2025 Pre-Budget Submission

Press Release

To support the development of the 2025 Budget, the Ontario government collects input from people, businesses, industries, and organizations from across Ontario. The Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies (OACAS) shares feedback with the Ontario government each year through a pre-budget submission. Click here to read the OACAS 2025 Pre-Budget Submission.

In Ontario, there are 50 designated children’s aid societies and Indigenous Child and Family Well-Being Agencies (child welfare agencies). Child welfare agencies have the exclusive legal responsibility to provide services 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. Last year, more that 125,000 calls and referrals were made to Ontario’s child welfare agencies.

Child welfare agencies are part of the network of community-based organizations and service providers that promote the health, well-being and safety of children, youth, and families across the province. They do not work alone. They work closely with organizations and service providers, as well as kin and alternate caregivers, to ensure families facing challenges get the right care, at the right time, close to home.

Ontario’s child welfare system is under immense pressure. Overwhelming workloads, increasingly complicated cases, burnout among direct service staff, inadequate access to community-based care, and an outdated funding formula are just some of the challenges child welfare agencies are facing. Agencies are struggling to fill systemic gaps and tackle barriers to care in the broader social services sector – this is not sustainable. The Ontario 2025 Budget presents an important opportunity for the province to bring positive change to the child welfare system.

Informed by feedback from member agencies and youth with lived experience receiving services from a child welfare agency, the OACAS 2025 Pre-Budget Submission outlines five priority areas for action:

• Strengthen social infrastructure in communities across the province so community-based organizations and service providers have capacity to meet the needs of children, youth, and families and effectively work in partnership to deliver integrated, wraparound supports, services, and treatment.
• Ensure children, youth, and families presenting with complex needs (i.e., social, emotional, developmental, mental health and addictions, etc.) have access to highly specialized, intensive services, supports, and treatment and/or out-of-home care and live-in treatment tailored to their unique needs.
• Bring greater financial stability and sustainability to the Ontario child welfare sector by modernizing the funding formula so that it aligns with service principles and best practices (i.e., early intervention, prevention, continued connections to kin, culture, and community) integral to delivering improved, equitable outcomes and responds to regional realities.
• Prioritize family- and community-based placements by ensuring kin and alternate caregivers receive adequate financial assistance, have timely access to local supports, services, and treatment, and receive care in a way that is culturally relevant, responsive, and identity-affirming.
• Support youth receiving supports and services from a child welfare agency as they transition to independence by continuing to fully fund Ready, Set, Go and improving access to integrated youth services in communities across the province.

READ MORE IN THE OACAS 2025 PRE-BUDGET SUBMISSION

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