Job Cuts At Windsor Essex CAS

The Windsor-Essex Children’s Aid Society has announced a “strategic workforce realignment due” to a financial shortfall that they say is primarily driven by the increasing demands and costs.

“A considerable driver of the deficit is attributed to the intensive resources required to effectively support children and youth with mental health challenges, developmental delays, behavioural issues, and other specialized needs,” a press release said.

According to CUPE 2286, the union representing workers, 26 workers – about 10 percent of their non-management staff have been laid off.

“We are committed to providing the best care possible for children and families, particularly those with the most complex needs,” said Derrick Drouillard, Executive Director of the Windsor-Essex Children’s Aid Society. “However, the growing demand for these services has significantly outpaced our financial capacity, leading to this difficult but necessary realignment of our workforce.”

As part of this realignment, WECAS says they will be optimizing staff resources while continuing to prioritize direct services for those most in needacross all of Windsor and Essex County.

The Leamington Office will also close at the end of this month.

“This is a betrayal of the community we serve and the CAS’s mandate,” said Craig Hesman, president of CUPE 2286 “This provincial government’s continued underfunding and ignorance of the complex needs of youth coming into CAS care has created this horrifying crisis. With the loss of these dedicated workers, an already bad situation is going to get dangerously worse.”

The union says cuts included the adoption department and the “family finder” position, which is tasked with finding other relatives to place children with. The union says WECAS also eliminated a position that was funded mostly with grants from the Dave Thomas Foundation. Other cuts include nine family service worker positions – people who do core protection work – as well as a communications worker, administrative support staff and people who coordinate volunteer drivers and community.

CUPE 2286 is calling on the agency to immediately reverse the layoffs and for the province to intervene with immediate adequate funding to protect families, support children and youth in the region, and to ultimately address the crisis of unlicensed placements.