Can Someone Be Removed From the Child Abuse Register in Ontario?

If a children's aid society has been involved with your family, it is natural to worry about a permanent mark against your name. People often use the phrase "child abuse register" for any kind of record or listing that follows a CAS finding.

This article explains the parts of the process that decide what happens after a finding: the court's orders, the ways an order can be reviewed or ended, and the complaint routes open to you. How any particular record is kept, and whether it can be removed, depends on your facts, so a lawyer should confirm that for you.

What a CAS finding is, and what the court decides

A society's concerns do not become a court order on their own. A court must find that a child is in need of protection. One ground is physical harm, or a risk of it, inflicted by the person having charge of the child, or caused by that person's failure to adequately care for, provide for, supervise or protect the child, or by a pattern of neglect.

Other grounds involve emotional harm, such as serious anxiety, depression, withdrawal, aggressive behaviour or delayed development caused by a parent's actions, failure to act or pattern of neglect, or a risk of such harm. The focus is on harm or risk to the child, not on labels attached to a parent.

The orders a court can make

Once a court finds a child in need of protection, the order it chooses shapes how long the case lasts.

Before choosing, the court must ask what efforts the society or others have made to assist the child. It cannot remove a child from the person who had charge of them unless less disruptive alternatives would be inadequate to protect the child.

How an order can be reviewed or ended

A status review is the usual way to ask a court to change course. The society must apply before a supervision order or interim society care order expires, and a parent can also apply on notice to the society. A parent generally must wait six months after the latest order or disposition, but that wait does not apply if the court is satisfied that a major element of the plan of care it relied on is not being carried out.

On a status review, the court can vary or end the original order, make a new order, or make a custody order. If the society serves you with a status review, it must do so at least 30 days before the order expires, and you must file and serve Form 33B.1 (Answer and plan of care) within 30 days of receiving it.

Disagreeing with a decision

• You can make a formal written complaint to the society, which must have an internal panel to review it.
• You can ask the Child and Family Services Review Board to review a society decision.
• You can complain to the Ontario Ombudsman.
• Get advice before signing a Statement of Agreed Facts (Form 33C), because what it says can matter later.

Be accurate in anything you file. Knowingly giving false information in a Part V application is punishable by up to $5,000, one year in jail, or both.

What to do next

• Write down which order, if any, was made, its date and when it expires.
• Keep every notice, application and Form 33B.1 deadline in one place.
• Ask a lawyer whether any record connected to your file can be challenged, and how.
• Do not sign agreed facts or agreements until you understand them.
• Consider a complaint to the society if you believe a decision was unfair.

Frequently asked questions