Toronto Star

“How is it that children and families are being abandoned by the system meant to protect them?” The question was from the father of a 14-year-old boy with autism, desperate to find help for his son. It underpins two exhaustive investigations by the Toronto Star into systemic failures to protect Ontario’s most vulnerable children. Kids in Crisis, by Megan Ogilvie and Amy Dempsey Raven, revealed that children with complex health needs were being housed in office buildings, trailers and roadside motels. It told the shocking story of parents being forced to consider the unthinkable last resort of abandoning their special-needs children at a hospital, the only way to get action from agencies that could help. In response, the Ontario ombudsman launched an investigation and Premier Doug Ford announced an audit of the child-welfare system. In The Invisible Girl, reporters Wendy Gillis and Jennifer Pagliaro found disturbing details about the life and death of a four-year-old girl whose body was found in a dumpster in a wealthy Toronto neighbourhood. Their work made it clear that Neveah had been utterly let down by everyone who should have been protecting her. Premier Ford admitted that Ontario’s child-protection agencies had “failed” Neveah.