Less than 10 per cent of the children in Toronto are Black, yet more than half the kids in the care of the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto are Black. Priscilla Manful is determined to do something about it.

Rocco Gizzarelli has been around long enough that he can remember the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Hamilton’s days using touch-tone, table-top phones with flashing red lights and pink message slips.

The Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto has acknowledged and apologized for historical harm committed against Indigenous and Black communities.

Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre donated 100 supermarket food vouchers and over 200 pre-made meals to help young people in need.

Mark Kartusch is a 53-year-old suburban dad, overseer of a real estate windfall and the guy entrusted to make sure a Catholic agency serving more than 6,000 vulnerable families has a future despite declining government funding.

Janelle Younge was 14 when she called Toronto’s Catholic Children’s Aid Society. When the social worker arrived and saw bruises spread across Younge’s face and arms, she wanted the girl out of the house right away, before her father got home.

This is Part 2 of our two-part series looking at reforms to Ontario’s child welfare system. Click here to read part 1.

We’re all born equal, but we’re born into different circumstances. When the circumstances are worse than just unequal, the rest of us are supposed to do something about it. That’s why we have children’s aid societies.

When kids aging out of the child welfare system got together in 2012 to tell the Ontario legislature what they think the system should look like, one of the first things they talked about was how invisible they become — how little the world knows about child protection.

Danielle remembers counting down the days until she would turn 16. On that day she was going to sign herself out of foster care, declare her freedom, begin her life for real.

TORONTO - Foster parent Cindy Stirling has been a difference maker.

TORONTO - A simple idea that has helped hundreds of women who face domestic violence and abuse is down to its last few weeks unless Ontario’s provincial government comes up with $70,000 per year to keep it going.

TORONTO - A new year brings a new exective director for the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto.

TORONTO - Amanda, a former youth-in-care with the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, is acutely aware that her 19-month-old son’s future is dependent on her success in school. 

TORONTO - Toronto’s Catholic Children’s Aid Society is “in the black but losing money,” said executive director Mary McConville.