The York Region Children’s Aid Society is completing a reformation in the wake of a 2020 report highlighting bullying and racism in the organization.
The organization has made changes to align with that operational review, as well as with feedback from the province and consultations over the past year, its CEO Ginelle Skerritt said. Over the next 10 months, it will create two new departments. One consolidated department will focus on child, youth and family well-being, and the other new department will include community relations plus advocacy.
Skerritt said it is no small feat to transform the organization, but they are making substantive changes.
“We’ve managed to reach a turning point in the life of the organization,” she said. “The staff that are with us now are all here for the purpose of creating a community of well-being surrounding the children.”
The child-welfare organization faced turmoil in 2020 after an operational review conducted by the province to look into serious allegations of racism and bullying.
The review released in November 2020 confirmed these issues were impacting staff and made a series of recommendations for a “new leadership direction” and work toward a better workplace culture.
Skerritt would step into the CEO role in October 2021, the first Black person to serve in the position, and was tasked with bringing about the required change.
Two new departments will be created with York Region Children’s Aid Society. One will consolidate the children protection and foster family resource departments into one new one for child, youth and family well-being. Skerritt said it underscores the organizational commitment to transforming how it thinks about child welfare.
“It will allow us to work in a different way,” she said. “Promoting child well-being and working with families in a constructive way to ensure that children are staying within the family networks that they belong.”
The other department is tentatively dedicated to community relations and will come about after further consultation with the community in the coming months. The organization said it would build collaborative community partnerships and “act as advocates toward an equitable and effective circle of care for each child, youth and family we serve.”
The York Region Alliance of African Communities (YRAACC) said strong partnerships between organizations like themselves and the society will create improvements.
They will “lead to better outcomes for children in our community, particularly those who have been marginalized,” YRAACC chair Lee Miller said in a news release. “We look forward to working with York Region CAS as they start this new chapter of their journey.”
Skerritt said she is optimistic about the future of the organization.
“I’m quite energized,” she said. “Working with staff and community to get to this point, I really feel we’re fulfilling the things that were called for in that report, and we’re even going further than that to develop positive ways of working together.”
