Impact Area Children and Youth in Care

Supportive parenting and caregiving has long-term implications for children's well-being and success in adulthood. Children who experience positive parenting are more likely to have better mental health, higher academic achievement, healthier relationships, and greater overall life satisfaction.

Many children and youth, due to varied circumstances, find themselves separated from their biological families and placed in foster care or alternative arrangements. Across Canada, approximately 59,000 children and youth are living in permanent government care with foster families, extended family, or in institutional settings - disproportionately impacting Indigenous and Black families. More than half of children under age 15 in foster care in Canada are Indigenous, even though they only account for 7.7% of the child population. While Canadian data on Black children is far more limited, the proportion of Black children admitted into care in Ontario was 2.2 times higher than their proportion in the child population.

Young people raised in government care face significant barriers that can severely impact their success and wellbeing. Typical outcomes for youth who age out of care include low academic achievement, unemployment or underemployment, homelessness and housing insecurity, criminal justice system involvement, early parenthood, poor physical and mental health, and loneliness. These outcomes have a ripple effect across Canadian society and the economy.

Research highlights the importance of reunification efforts, kinship and customary care, and support systems that enable children and youth to maintain meaningful relationships with their relatives or other close supportive adults. Supporting and enhancing kinship bonds not only preserves a sense of identity and belonging within their extended families and communities but also improves the overall well-being and outcomes of children and youth.

Kinship and customary care offer several advantages for children compared to non-kinship and customary care. However, there is no national approach or standard for supporting and enabling kinship and customary care in Canada. This was a key learning through our first Impact Challenge launched in 2021. It focused on finding programs and interventions that enable families and children to live prosperous lives through stronger parenting and supports for children and youth connected to the child protection system. This learning has been reinforced through conversations and studies that have highlighted an approach that focuses on creating belonging to help improve emotional well-being, reduce risks of abuse and lead to shorter lengths of stay in care.

Each province and territory develops its own approach to kinship and customary care and as a result supports for these caregivers vary across the country — including across Indigenous jurisdictions. Further, there is a pattern of child protection agencies providing less financial support, supervision, training and respite to kin caregivers compared to non-kin caregivers.

Our Opportunity

We believe that enabling families to strengthen bonds and supporting children and youth in contact with child protection systems to build strong and empowering relationships, enables resilience and fosters a sense of belonging that is a critical foundation for brighter futures and thriving communities. Investing in the well-being of children and families profoundly influences a child's trajectory in life. 

Our Work

In 2024 we launched the Reconnect Impact Challenge to support children and youth connected to the child protection system to connect with kin and build strong and empowering relationships. Kin are individuals who have a relationship with a child or youth and may include biologically related kin or individuals without a biological connection but with a significant social connection and an emotional bond.

The $2.1M Reconnect Impact Challenge invested across Canada to support children and youth connected to the child protection system to thrive.

Our Advisory Committee comprised individuals with lived experience in child protection services, academic experts and front-line practitioners, provided input into the design of the Challenge, reviewed all funding applications, and provided recommendations.

Organizations funded through the Reconnect Impact Challenge

Inaugural (2021) Impact Challenge

In 2021, we launched our first Impact Challenge in search of programs and interventions that enable families and children to live prosperous lives through stronger parenting and supports for children in contact with child protection systems. 

The inaugural Impact Challenge received applications from across Canada. Over $1.5M was invested across six organizations that demonstrated innovative, measurable, and impactful solutions that enable families to thrive and stay together through stronger parenting and supports. 

Organizations funded through the Inaugural Impact Challenge