It’s unacceptable,” says Michael Coteau, whose ministry spends $1.5 billion a year funding Ontario’s 47 privately run children’s aid societies. In an interview, he did not say if the allowance would be extended to non-indigenous families like Marlene’s. Another study by leading child welfare researchers, published in February, found that Ontario child protection workers noted “unsafe housing conditions” in almost 4,000 cases they investigated in 2013. (On average, 15,625 Ontario children were in foster or group-home care in 2014-15.) When the society realized the children were staying at Marlene’s, they were taken into foster care on Jan. 28, 2015.

Source: thestar March 12, 2017 11:03 UTC