‘The system has fallen apart’: A child dies every 3 days under Ontario’s care network

Every three days, a child who has been involved with Ontario’s care system dies.

That’s according to provincial data obtained by Global News using freedom of information laws that tracked the deaths of 354 children between 2020 and 2022 who were under the care of the government in some form.

The information captures children who died while living in care or with social work files that are either open or closed within 12 months of their death.

The stark figures are causing alarm among advocates who say the government is failing in its most basic duty.

“I’m mortified, I had no idea that this many kids were dying who have been in care, involved in care or somewhat around the system,” Ontario NDP MPP Monique Taylor told Global News after seeing the data.

“I think this number is absolutely terrifying and it just really confirms the lack of belief that I have in the government to be able to take care of our most vulnerable kids.”

In 2020, the Ontario government’s Child Welfare Operations Branch began to collect and summarize the pile of death notifications it received through “contentious issue reports.”

For the past three years, the number of contentious issue reports dealing with the death of a child was rolled up into a presentation showing how children had died, where they had died and how old they were, among other details.

The first three years of data, the only figures currently available using freedom of information laws, paint a troubling picture.

It shows that in 2020, 104 children associated with care died. In 2021 that number spiked to 129, while 121 deaths were recorded in 2022. The three-year average of 118 child deaths in the report works out as roughly one every three days.

The report accessed by Global News is one of