The executive director of the Brant Family and Children’s Aid Society says that layoffs are needed in order to cut its budget.
Andrew Koster says 25 union jobs and an undetermined number of managers are expected to be cut due to funding pressures.
The society needs to shed $1.75 million by September due to a change in funding for the agency. Under the previous government, a new children's aid society came online in the province, and while the funding formula didn't change, the total dollars available did.
Additionally, Koster says that a quarter of open cases in Brant County are due to drug-addicted parents.
Anecdotally, he notes that a lot of new cases are because the parents have died by overdose. One foster mother has taken in eight children—seven of them were addicted to opioids at birth.
In 2017, the Canadian Institute of Health found that Brantford had the highest rate of opioid hospitalization in Ontario, at 60 in every 100,000 people.
