What is FCC? 

A respectful process for families to come together with their support persons, community service providers and CAS worker. The objective is to reach mutual agreement on what needs to happen or what steps need to be taken to keep children safe and families strong.

The process involves an open discussion of family strengths and child protection concerns, while respecting cultural and religious differences. The goal is to develop solutions that meet the needs of the child and family.

It is a voluntary process that is of benefit to the family because it honours their own decision making abilities.

To learn more or to access our pamphlet, click here.

What are the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) of Toronto’s responsibilities? What happens when a report is made? What are the child’s rights? What are the parent’s rights?

 The answers to these and other important questions are included in our fact sheet Children’s Aid Society of Toronto’s Responsibilities and Client Rights…click here to access.

The Children’s Aid Society of Toronto aims to provide the highest quality service to families and children. If there are concerns about our services, we want to work together with you to resolve them. We also have a formal process to review your complaints as required by the Child and Family Services Act.

 For more information, please click here to review our Resolving Client Concerns or Complaints fact sheet.

Additional information is also available from the Ministry of Children and Youth Services. There are two pamphlets which may be helpful:

• Do you want a review of a decision you have received from an Ontario Children’s Aid Society or licensee? click here
• Do you have a complaint about services you have sought or received from an Ontario Children’s Aid Society? click here

CAS of Toronto offers services primarily to its clients but has a number of community based activities and broad reaching initiatives.  Click on the sections to the left to find out more. 

Our legal mandate is to intervene, where necessary, to protect children from abuse and neglect. 

We make our services available 24 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week.

We make every effort to protect children without removing them from their homes.  We strive to achieve this through professional expertise and relationship building, crisis-oriented intervention, counselling, other supportive services and referrals to community resources. For every one child we must bring into our care, we work with nine more in their own family.

When the potential risk to a child is significant and he or she must be brought into our care, the Society must take the matter to Family Court within 5 days, where a judge will decide what plan is in the best interests of the child.

Often what is required for a child to live and thrive in a community is a change to the social environment so that it supports the reductions of risks to the child. Our community work and prevention team engages in community building and mobilization to help residents strengthen their communities.

We have an active research program with dozens of research and evaluation activities ongoing. We focus our research efforts on providing evidenced based outcomes and evaluating emerging services. This enables us to build a solid foundation of knowledge from which to develop and refine our most beneficial programs.

Child welfare is a community responsibility. We educate the public about our services and their role by publishing promotional materials, appearing in media and staging events during October’s Child Abuse Prevention month. We have an active speakers bureau, which makes presentations about our work and the community’s role to a large variety of organizations, and groups. Topics include our agency’s work, child abuse, adoption, foster care, effective parenting techniques and other issues of social concern. To request a speaker click here.

We are fortunate to have hundreds of volunteers who come from varied cultures who give us thousands of hours of their time. They enrich the agency’s service to the community with their skills, energy and commitment to children. They also reap the benefits of orientation, ongoing education and supervision. To find out more about volunteering, click on the adoption button on the menu bar.

The Children’s Aid Society of Toronto consists of four community branches (North York, Etobicoke, Scarborough and Toronto) working together on behalf of children in the community.

We often draw on the talents of other agencies and community organizations when required. (more…)

Our main focus is maintaining the family unit.  To that end we make every effort to provide intensive assistance and support to children within their own family unit, or with care providers.

When children are in CAS care, we exert a calming influence as we strive to affect reunification with family as quickly as possible.

This is a voluntary pregnancy counseling service for women and their partners who request help.  We provide information and referrals to resources to help in decision-making.  Services can begin with early pregnancy and continue until the family stabilizes or is referred for protection services.

In order to make every effort to prevent admission to care we offer two-day treatment programs to children and their families.  This combines individual counseling with group programs in an on-site classroom.  The objective here is to promote successful reintegration to families and communities, and on averting breakdowns in foster care placements.

Children’s services workers specifically tend to children admitted to care on a short-term basis. Short-term care exists while reunification is planned between the child and family.  The primary function is to soothe the emotional impact of separation from families by helping with adjusting to new households and care providers.  The eventual objective, of course, is family reunification.

In extremely severe family situations, the child may be made a Crown ward by the court.  Crown wards are permanent wards of the province until age 18, or are adopted.  During this time the Children’s Aid Society assumes the rights and responsibilities of the parent.

Child and Youth Services also operates in collaboration with the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, Pape Adolescent Resource Centre (PARC).

Foster care is the preferred choice for children who require admission to our care.  The Foster Care and Adoption Services department is responsible for the recruitment of, and support to foster parents and for matching children requiring placement with an appropriate foster home.

Foster parents can assume the care of children from newborns to teens.  We make every effort to recruit a wide range of foster homes from all sections of the community, being especially sensitive to the racial, ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds of the children in our care.

Our social workers work with foster parents to develop plans that are in the foster child’s best interests.

The health of the children in our care is uppermost in our mandate.  Our constant goal is to provide the very best available preventive and therapeutic medical care, as well as routine, restorative and preventive dental services to the children.

Internal Resources provides a range of specialized services for children and youth living in the agency’s care and others residing in the community who are at risk of being brought into our care.   These services include housing, supervision, counseling, therapy, assessment, and programs for preparing youth for eventual independence.

Providing a ‘permanent’ family and security for a child is our eventual goal; adoption is the usual answer to both of these situations. Adoption is a well-structured, legally binding process which establisheS a lifelong parent-child relationship. (more…)

The Children’s Aid Society of Toronto will provide non-identifying information from our records to adult adopted persons, birth parents, birth grandparents, birth siblings and to former Crown Wards. A reunion support group meets at the agency once a month and is open to anyone involved in a reunion. For more information, please call 416-924-4646 and ask for the Inquiry Coordinator or email your_roots@TorontoCAS.ca.

Adult adopted persons wishing to obtain a copy of their original birth registration and/or their final adoption order, and birth parents wishing to obtain access to information from their child’s birth records and adoption orders can contact the Ministry of Community and Social Services at www.mcss.gov.on.ca or call (416)325-5666 or toll free at 1-888-789-4199.

The Children’s Aid Society of Toronto welcomes and celebrates lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and transgendered children, youth, staff, caregivers and volunteers.  We provide services that are welcoming, accessible and appropriate to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and transgendered youth.  We provide training in best practices, and conduct anti-homophobia workshops and and initiatives.  We are also involved in research and consulting to ensure the continued development of best practices.