Indigenous and Black children are over-represented in foster care and group homes overseen by children’s aid societies across the province, an Ontario Human Rights Commission inquiry confirms.

“These findings are deeply concerning,” said Chief Commissioner Renu Mandhane, who noted Indigenous and Black communities have been raising the alarm about the problem for decades.

“The long-term damage caused by separating children from their families is undeniable and was extensively documented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,” Mandhane said. “The government and CASs must take urgent action.”

Provincial legislation in 2016 mandated societies to collect race-based statistics, but data collection processes and practices remain a “patchwork” across the sector, says the commission’s report, “Interrupted Childhoods,” released Thursday.

Despite the limited information, the commission found Indigenous children were over-represented in 93 per cent of the 27 mainstream children’s aid societies examined. Overall, the proportion of Indigenous children taken into care was 2.6 times higher than their proportion of the child population.

Black children were over-represented in 30 per cent of CASs, an admission rate 2.2 times higher than their proportion in the child population.

Identifying and addressing potential systemic racism within Ontario’s child protection system is part of the solution, the commission says. But broader social and economic issues that contribute to the over-representation of Indigenous and Black children in the care of children’s aid also need to be addressed, it says.

“The majority of children are separated from their families not because of abuse but because of neglect,” Mandhane said in an interview. “This really questions whether we, as a society, (have) the right response to poverty and other socio-economic factors.”

As a result, the commission urges Queen’s Park to develop a provincial strategy, with goals and timelines, to identify and address how families’ social and economic conditions are linked to racial disproportionality and disparity in the system.

In addition to improving data collection, the commission calls on societies to acknowledge the disproportionalities and investigate whether their structures, policies, processes, decision-making practices and organizational cultures adversely affect Indigenous and Black families and potentially violate Ontario’s Human Rights Code.

The Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies, which represents 38 mainstream societies across the province, welcomed Thursday’s report. It said the sector acknowledges the “tremendous negative impact” its actions have had on Indigenous and Black children and families and has started to address the way societies interact with these communities.

The sector has publicly apologized to the province’s Indigenous communities affected by the ’60s Scoop, which saw thousands of Indigenous children taken from their homes and placed in foster care, and ongoing harmful child protection practices.

And it is working to implement a new “practice framework,” produced in collaboration with Black community leaders, to change the way societies interact with Black families.

“We are committed to changing the way we work so that child welfare will be an equitable system for all families in Ontario,” association CEO Mary Ballantyne said in a statement.

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The commission launched the public interest inquiry in 2016 in response to a recommendation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendation that governments publish annual reports on the number of Indigenous children in care. That commission described the decades-long policy of forcing Indigenous children into residential schools as cultural genocide. Some Indigenous leaders argue the process continues under the child protection system.

Mandhane said she was also moved to act after a 2014 Star investigation found 41.8 per cent of kids in the care of the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto were Black at a time when the city’s under-18 population was just 8.2 per cent.