Visitation for Children and Youth in Care: Opportunities and Actions

The safety and well-being of children and youth is a central priority of the Ministry of Children and Family Development, including the requirement that children and youth in care are visited – in person and privately – at least once every 90 days.

In person, private visits ensure child protection and guardianship workers are able to assess a child’s overall well-being and build a connection with the child or youth. These connections and relationships are critical for children and youth to feel comfortable using their voice in conversations, knowing their worker will actively listen to their experiences and how they are feeling to ensure they are being properly cared for and receiving the supports they need to thrive. In-person visits help build trust and familiarity, offer opportunities for conversations about school, mental health, relationships, and support children and youth to develop connections and feel a sense of belonging to community, culture, people and places.

In October 2023, MCFD commissioned an independent, third-party review of visitations of children and youth in care, including oversight of visitation policy, procedures and documentation of care. The resulting two reports drew from data and statistics for the period from June to August 2023, along with interviews with ministry and Indigenous Child and Family Service Agency workers and team leaders.

This independent assessment provides important information on adherence to ministry policy regarding visitation. It is also guiding changes and improvements and is an important input in assessing the ministry’s overall system of quality improvements focused on providing better service for children and youth in care.

The independent assessment team found that 99.1% of children and youth were visited at least once within 90 days. This is a good sign that children are being visited as intended. And there is more to do. Every child and youth in care needs to be regularly visited and connected with. The ministry is actively working on some key actions including:

• The increased use of technology to enable social workers to document child visits clearly and easily as well as to support record keeping, monitoring and oversight.
• The development and ongoing delivery of training sessions for staff to ensure policy, practice, tracking and the use of technology are clearly understood.
• The introduction of real time monitoring of visitations of all children in care.
• Implementation of a new child youth visit monitoring report that tracks completion of child visits. This report provides team leads and supervisors with access to up-to-date information regarding completion of child visits, thereby strengthening their oversight and support for workers.
• The implementation of initial policy changes such as timely documentation of visits, and further policy updates on private visitation and other items.
• Piloting the deployment of mobile solutions for documentation to support workers when they are out in the community.

Collectively, these actions – and others – are reflective of the ministry’s commitment to continuously improve its services and to implement lessons learned to ensure that any and all changes are having the intended impacts and are directly benefiting children and youth in care. Children and youth deserve to be safe, connected, loved and to live in settings where their physical, social and emotional needs are nurtured and supported. It is our responsibility to ensure that there is strong oversight and accountability, and our teams are well supported to provide this care. The ministry will continue to assess and measure actions taken to make sure they are having the intended effect and to determine what further system changes are required.