Fallon, B., Black, T., Lefebvre, R., Trocmé, N., Hélie, S., Crowe, A., Miller, M., Budau, K., Houston, E., King, B., Esposito, B., Fluke, J., Collin‑Vézina, D., Parada, H., Provençal, J., Chhabra, N., Sawh, P., Chan, P., Chowdhury, R., … Wilson, L. (2025). Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect-2023 (OIS‑2023). Toronto, ON: Child Welfare Research Portal.
The OIS‑2023 is the seventh provincial study to examine the incidence of reported child maltreatment and the characteristics of the children and families investigated by child protection services in Ontario. The OIS‑2023 tracked 6,799 child maltreatment-related investigations (6,360 investigations involving children less than one to 15 years old and 439 investigations involving 16- and 17-year-olds) conducted in a representative sample of 20 child welfare service agencies across Ontario in the fall of 2023. To maintain comparability between cycles of the OIS, Chapter 3 provides descriptive data based on the 6,360 investigations of children 0-15 years of age. The rest of this report provides descriptive data based on the full sample of investigations involving children 0-17 years of age.