Court-Ordered Assessments In Ontario Child Welfare Cases: Review And Recommendations For Reform

This paper is based on an unpublished Report prepared with government support that reviewed literature and jurisprudence on forensic child welfare assessments, and surveyed Ontario judges, lawyers, social workers and assessors on their experiences and concerns with these assessments. The Report made recommendations for short-term changes in regulations and practice in Ontario, and the paper discusses the government response to these recommendations. This paper also considers recommendations in the Report for the establishment of an agency with a province-wide mandate for forensic child welfare assessments, to address such systemic issues as the shortage of qualified assessors, the absence of standards and the lack of effective monitoring.