Office of the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth Annual Report
On Tuesday February 24, 2009 David Rivard, Chief Executive Officer of the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto was mentioned in a Toronto Star article regarding their story from the previous day, on a report from the Office of the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth, entitled 90 Deaths: Ninety Voices Silenced. The Office of the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth serves youth in provincial care through individual, systemic and policy advocacy. In the article, Mr. Rivard stressed the fact that there is no need for a parallel review process of child deaths. During the conversation with the reporter Mr. Rivard also mentioned that confidentiality and privacy issues would need to be addressed before any information could be transferred to the Provincial Advocate’s office and that there already is a process in place through the Coroner’s Office to review child deaths in Ontario. Unfortunately the article did not reflect these comments. Privacy and confidentiality matters are amongst the guiding principles and of the utmost concern to all CAS’s, and any inference that case files would be turned over to any office without the strictest regime of attention being applied to client and staff privacy concerns is not in keeping with this approach.
