A Legacy of Caring
Page 10
The second-largest group consisted of young people “growing up without salutary parental control and under circumstances tending to make them idle and dissolute.” Children deserted by their parents formed the third-largest group of those who were apprehended.
The society’s annual reports regularly gave case examples of its child protection work. Mary, Jesse and Tim, for instance, aged six, four and three, were found living in a house in a wretched condition.
Piles of dirty clothing and garbage on the floor, the three little children huddled in one filthy bed crying with cold and hunger. Mother staggering about just lighting fire although it was [already midday] and the temperature outside was below zero.
“Piles of dirty clothing and garbage on the floor, the three little children huddled in one filthy bed crying with cold and hunger. Mother staggering about just lighting fire although it was [already midday] and the temperature outside was below zero.”
Case study from CAS of
Toronto annual report
The children were admitted to the agency’s care while the mother, once sober and confronted with the loss of her children, began to plan with the worker for their care. Arrangements were made for them to live with an aunt in the country for a few months. Meanwhile, the worker helped the mother to deal with her drinking, move to a less dilapidated house and obtain a mothers’ allowance cheque from the government. She was successful and, before long, the children were back home, attending school regularly, with “no signs of drunkenness” on the part of the mother.
Another example is that of ten-year-old Sarah, who was brought to the office by a woman asking that the agency “adopt her out.” Sarah’s father had disappeared, leaving her in the care of the woman.
Illegitimate and unwanted, she had been transferred from the mother to the father and thus was living with his so-called third “wife.” This woman hated the child and was very cruel to her and so the little one was passed from one place to another, the father constantly evading his obligation to support her.
The worker apprehended Sarah and placed her with foster parents, then worked to find the father. He was eventually located and started paying the society for her care. Sarah remained in the agency’s care and was reported as being “well clothed and happy and to be making good progress.”
The development of boarding home care at the CAS
Following the lead of Vera Moberly, with whom he worked closely, Bob Mills began to experiment with care for children in closely supervised foster homes where board was paid. Proceeding cautiously, in 1924 the society placed only two children in boarding homes. By 1927, however, there were 169 children living in this category of foster family care.
Unlike the so-called “free homes” that the agency had largely depended on until this time, boarding homes would often take sibling groups of children into their care. One example was the four immigrant Ukrainian children, featured in the 1928 annual report, who were placed with the same foster parents following the sudden death of their mother:
Unlike the so-called “free homes” that the agency had largely depended on until this time, boarding homes would often take sibling groups of children into their care.
There is no more appreciative group of children in the world than these little Russian-Canadian children. They know that all their success and happiness is due to kindly foster parents who came to their rescue when they needed assistance the most. As Olga says impatiently when she meets some of her former friends who sigh and shake their heads and say “Poor Olga,” “I don’t know why they should cry. We’re better off now than we ever were before [in the shelter] and happier than we ever dreamed of being.”
Increasingly, many youngsters with a behavioural problem, a developmental handicap or other special needs, who previously would have been considered suitable only for institutional care, began to be placed successfully in boarding homes. Six-year-old Teddy was one such child. The son of a single, developmentally handicapped mother, he had been in and out of the CAS shelter. According to the 1927 annual report:
At the age of three he was made a ward. Markedly retarded and unable to talk, he was an impossibility for adoption. Placed in a boarding home, he had made splendid progress. A mental examination two years later showed almost normal intelligence. Last January, he was admitted to special speech training classes. His improvement has been so favourable that he was selected to demonstrate to the recent teachers’ convention the effectiveness of [boarding home care].
Increasingly, many youngsters with a behavioural problem, a developmental handicap or other special needs, who previously would have been considered suitable only for institutional care, began to be placed successfully in boarding homes.
“At the age of three Teddy was made a ward. Markedly retarded and unable to talk, he was an impossibility for adoption. Placed in a boarding home, he had made splendid progress. A mental examination two years later showed almost normal intelligence. Last January, he was admitted to special speech training classes. His improvement has been so favourable that he was selected to demonstrate to the recent teachers’ convention the effectiveness of [boarding home care].”
— CAS Annual Report, 1927
The introduction of boarding home care also allowed for the placement in foster homes of non-wards (children admitted to the society’s temporary care while a parent was sick or family problems were being sorted out). Until this time, non-wards had always spent their time in care living in the shelter because free homes were regarded as more or less permanent placements.
Boarding homes quickly became an integral part of the agency’s services, as evidenced by this comment in the 1928 annual report:
A great deal of work has gone into securing proper foster homes and we regard our boarding fathers and mothers as much a part of our staff as our field workers or supervisor. In order to foster esprit de corps, we had a series of conferences on various problems and started a monthly bulletin, Co-operation, which now has a circulation of about 350 copies.
“A great deal of work has gone into securing proper foster homes and we regard our boarding fathers and mothers as much a part of our staff as our field workers or supervisor. In order to foster esprit de corps, we had a series of conferences on various problems and started a monthly bulletin, Co-operation, which now has a circulation of about 350 copies.”
— CAS Annual Report, 1928
Home supervisors — staff members who were part of the society’s child-placing department — supported the foster parents and the children placed with them. The frequency of their visits to the child and foster family varied according to the type of care the child was receiving. Free homes were visited, on average, every two months. Boarding homes, on the other hand, were visited at least every three weeks. Health, psychological and dental services were provided at the agency’s own medical clinic — an important benefit before the days of universal public health insurance.
In 1930, two staff took a course in group work at the University of Toronto and subsequently led regular workshops for boarding home parents on caring for foster children. Later that decade, seminars were added specifically for foster fathers. Dr. Marion Hilliard, the agency’s physician, gave regular talks about child health.
In 1930, two staff took a course in group work at the University of Toronto and subsequently led regular workshops for boarding home parents on caring for foster children.
Despite the demonstrated success of boarding home care, the old opinion that paying foster parents would somehow diminish the quality of care they provided took a long time to disappear. The annual report of 1925, was, however, emphatic:
We feel that [boarding homes] are as much inspired by motives of service as [free homes]. As one foster father said, “I am beginning to feel of real use in the world now, helping to bring up these two boys to be good and honourable and useful men.”
Free homes, in the meantime, remained an important resource for many children in the agency’s care. F
ollowing the introduction of legal adoption in Ontario in 1921, many became adoption homes after a statutory two-year probationary period.
At the end of 1939, the society had 1,446 children in its care. Of these, 808 were in paid care (13 in the shelter, 679 in boarding homes and 116 in outside paid institutions) with the remaining 638 in free care (555 in free foster homes and 83 in outside free institutions).
At the end of 1939, the society had 1,446 children in its care. Of these, 808 were in paid care (13 in the shelter, 679 in boarding homes and 116 in outside paid institutions) with the remaining 638 in free care (555 in free foster homes and 83 in outside free institutions).
Financial stability
Of all Bob Mills’s reforms, he considered his greatest contribution to be the stabilization of the society’s finances and the guarantee of funding for its programs.
Excerpt from the 1924 annual report, showing CAS services and funding.
Photo reprinted with permission of City of Toronto Archives, SC1, Series B, 1924 Annual Report, Page 5.
Early in his career as managing director of the society, Mills began to work closely with the city auditor to analyze the actual cost of maintaining children in the agency’s care. Soon, court orders began to be made on that basis. Funding from the city no longer came in an annual grant but was allocated based on the number of children made wards of the society by the juvenile court. In 1925, the agency received $26,000 from the city to care for its 800 or so wards. This represented almost 45 percent of its overall annual expenditure of $60,000.
The costs of protection work in the community and of caring for non-wards were funded by the Federation for Community Service. The society had joined the federation in 1922 — participating in its fifth campaign — and quickly became one of its leading members. In 1925, the CAS’s grant from the federation was $13,275.
That year, Mills obtained $4,000 in financial assistance from J.J. Kelso, the province’s superintendent of neglected and dependent children. As a direct result of the antipathy other children’s aid societies expressed over this unusual aid, a provincial rating system was created under which societies received grants on the basis of their assessed efficiency and the amount of responsibility they accepted within their communities. The records are silent as to how the province initially rated the CAS of Toronto. However, in 1935 the agency was awarded only a B grade because, as described below, it did not accept the full responsibilities that Kelso wished to delegate to it under the Children of Unmarried Parents Act.
Direct voluntary donations, in addition to those made through the Federation for Community Service, remained important. In 1925, these direct donations amounted to $10,000. To keep the agency in the public eye and help maintain the flow of charitable dollars, communications activities were strengthened. The work of the society was regularly featured in newspaper articles. Slide show presentations were made to community groups. Information bulletins — which were updated frequently — were posted on the University Avenue side of the shelter building to catch the attention of passersby. In the mid-1930s, the society commissioned a colour movie of children in foster homes. It was often shown at service clubs and church meetings as a publicity vehicle for both the society and the Infants’ Home.
To keep the agency in the public eye and help maintain the flow of donations, communications activities were strengthened. The work of the society was regularly featured in newspaper articles. Slide show presentations were made to community groups. Information bulletins — which were updated frequently — were posted on the University Avenue side of the shelter building to catch the attention of passersby.
By 1939, at the end of the era covered by this chapter, the society’s operating budget was about $300,000. Of this, $66,000 came from the Federation for Community Service, $211,000 from the City of Toronto and other municipalities, $2,500 from the government of Ontario and $2,000 from voluntary contributions. The books were balanced by income from investments and a small bank loan.
By 1939, the society’s operating budget was about $300,000.
A large part of the society’s annual spending covered the day-to-day care it provided to its wards. By 1939, this amounted to more than $100,000 annually. To save money, children in care were supplied with clothes from a central clothing room, many of them handmade by volunteers. While this may have been understandable during the financial hardships of the 1930s, the custom had actually been established long before the Depression. This suggests that little thought was given to the practice’s psychological effect on the children, as it further set them apart from others in the community who presumably purchased at least some of their clothing from local stores.
Staff salaries were another large expense; in 1939, they amounted to about $70,000. When Bob Mills was appointed managing director in 1923, the board granted him a salary of $4,500 a year. This was high for a social work administrator — Vera Moberly’s starting salary, in contrast, had been only $1,800, plus free board and lodging — and bore no relationship to the amounts paid to the field workers, who earned about $1,300. Salaries remained at these levels until 1933, when they were cut by 10 percent as an economizing measure. (The reduction was lifted in 1938.)
Salaries for field workers stayed at about $1,300 in the decade between 1923 and 1933, in which year they were cut by 10 percent as an economizing measure.
Through the 1930s, considerable tension mounted between Mills and the society’s board of management as the Depression threatened the agency’s financial stability and each contended with their evolving roles in policy formation, administration and service delivery. Mills, however, was highly regarded across Canada — and beyond — as a skilled and knowledgeable child welfare manager; so, in the end, his views usually prevailed.
The Infants’ Home’s work with unmarried mothers
In the early years of the twentieth century, the question of what to do about unmarried parents and their children was a topic of heated debate, in which J.J. Kelso played an influential role. Public opinion, driven by a belief that such mothers deserved punishment, was intolerant. These attitudes were reflected by a Toronto police department ban on officers and their wives becoming foster parents. The department feared a scandal would result if an unwed mother were seen visiting an officer’s home.
The public, driven by a belief that unmarried mothers deserved punishment, was intolerant of them. Such attitudes were reflected by a Toronto police department ban on officers and their wives becoming foster parents. The department feared a scandal would result if an unwed mother were seen visiting an officer’s home.
Although sympathetic toward unmarried mothers because they were all too often cut off from relatives and friends and had no access to the money needed to care for their children, Kelso’s main concern was for the welfare of the child:
The experience of ages has proved conclusively that no unmarried mother can successfully bring up her child and save it from disgrace and obloquy, whereas the child, if adopted young by respectable, childless people, will grow up creditably and without any painful reminder of its origin.
“The experience of ages has proved conclusively that no unmarried mother can successfully bring up her child and save it from disgrace and obloquy, whereas the child, if adopted young by respectable, childless people, will grow up creditably and without any painful reminder of its origin.”
— J.J. Kelso
Concerns had also arisen during the First World War about the increase in the number of children born to married women as a result of relationships with men other than their soldier husbands. Twenty percent of the children in the care of the Infants Home at the end of the war fell into this category.
The demands for government action to meet the needs of children born out of wedlock prompted Queen’s Park to pass the Children of Unmarried Parents Act of 1921. Under it, Kelso’s office was made responsible for supervising children born to unmarried mothers, to make whatever arrangements for the child’s welfare he d
eemed appropriate, to prove who the father was and to obtain support payments from him.
Under the Children of Unmarried Parents Act of 1921, Kelso’s office was made responsible for supervising children born to unmarried mothers, to make whatever arrangements for the child’s welfare he deemed appropriate, to prove who the father was and to obtain support payments from him. These responsibilities eventually fell to the Infants’ Home.
Kelso found the legislation difficult to implement, not least because the government of Premier E.C. Drury allocated no additional staff or funds for the purpose. His new responsibilities, along with those related to a recently introduced adoption act, described below, took up most of his time. This meant that he no longer had the opportunity to visit and supervise children’s aid societies across the province, one of the issues that had led former CAS of Toronto president John MacDonald to dismiss Kelso’s concerns about his management of the society.
It was not long, therefore, before Kelso began negotiating with local children’s aid societies to undertake, on his behalf, the work with unmarried mothers. The CAS of Toronto, however, refused all cooperation with Kelso on this issue, both because the agency would receive no government funds for the purpose and because all final decision making authority on individual cases would still remain with Kelso’s office.
As a result, work that the society might have undertaken with unmarried mothers and their children fell by default to the Infants’ Home. Although the agency’s board revisited the decision on several occasions, the CAS of Toronto did not assume responsibility for working with unwed mothers and their children until 1951, when the CAS merged with the Infants’ Home.