This toolkit was published by the Ministry of Children, Community & Social Services.

HERE’S HOW THE AUTHORS DESCRIBE THIS TOOLKIT:

This standards framework provides an overview of what high-quality residential care looks like across all sectors and settings that make up licensed residential services for children and young persons in Ontario. These sectors include child welfare, youth justice, child and youth mental health, and special needs. The quality standards focus on conditions or topics where there may be variations in how care is delivered, or where there may be gaps between the care currently provided in Ontario and the care children and young persons should receive from licensed residential service providers.

Quality standards are different from service standards. Service standards describe specific actions or processes that must be taken to meet a specific standard of service, and are used to measure the expected level of performance for a service provider. A local example of service standards is Ontario’s Child Protection Standards (2016), which outline the minimum level of performance for child protection workers across the province. Quality standards do not prescribe specific actions that individuals must take to meet a standard. Instead, quality standards describe the conditions that should be present in a caring environment to support the provision of high-quality care.

Additionally, the quality standards focus on residential care: the common care services provided across all licensed residential settings and all sectors. For example, providing the setting and meeting the daily needs of all children and young persons. As such, developing standards for other services and supports that may be delivered in licensed residential settings is outside the scope of this standards framework (including specialized or mental health treatment services such as psychiatric counselling). Delivering high-quality residential care is the foundation to creating an environment that supports optimal development and facilitates other services and supports, such as mental health treatment.