Disability Advocates Demand Ontario Fix “Crisis” in Group Homes

Disability advocates are calling Ontario’s treatment of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities a “crisis,” citing deaths, chronic underfunding, incidents of abuse and the stripping of rights from group-home residents as symptoms of deep structural issues with the way the province is administering care.

Late last month, a coalition including the Disability Justice Network of Ontario (DJNO), Families for Accountability, Inclusion, and Reform (FAIR), and Access to Seniors and Disabled (AS&D), held a press conference at Queen’s Park to ask the government to take action to improve conditions for disabled people living in group homes across the province.

“The reality is that, from the data we have available, we know that 233 people have passed away in group homes due to a whole host of circumstances from 2020 to 2022,” Brad Evoy, the DJNO’s executive director told PressProgress. “We know those numbers haven’t really let up in the intervening years, and we know that there are countless cases of abuse and violence that are happening in the group-home system.”

Evoy added that the group-home system is ultimately not accountable to the people that reside there, or to their families, in a “whole host of ways.”

“I think what we’re seeing is that people have had enough, and I think the families have had enough,” said Evoy.

The issues identified by the DJNO include institutional abuse and neglect, gaps and lack of transparency in funding, the concentration of power in agencies and the exclusion of families and legal guardians from decision-making.

Evoy said that the way some people experience their rights, or those of their family members, being stripped away in group homes is reminiscent of the dark history of institutionalization.

The press conference included two representatives of FAIR who had family members living in group homes.

Carolyn Troughton had requested that her daughter, who lives full-time at a group home, not receive one-on-one overnight personal care from male staff. But she said that, despite this, the group home administered care through a male caregiver for several months without her knowledge.

After lodging a formal complaint and advocating for policies around gender-based care, Troughton said she was labeled as belligerent by the organization and threatened with a no-trespass order.

Angela Richard, also from FAIR, said she was banned from speaking to frontline staff after advocating for several years on behalf of her non-verbal daughter. She must now give 48 hours’ notice before visiting and two weeks’ notice to be able to take her home for a weekend.

According to Maria Sardelis from Access to Seniors and Disabled, this is a misuse of the Trespass to Property Act, but group homes are continuing to trespass caregivers.

“You cannot trespass the invited guest of the resident, and you cannot trespass a person with legally conferred authority, such as substitute decision makers or legal guardians,” Sardelis explained. “Our courts have said it, not me.”

Sardelis added that restrictions on visitors are illegal under the Residential Tenancies Act, and that group home residents are having their Charter rights infringed.

“These homes act above the law because they can. There’s no consequences,” Sardelis said.

Also brought up in the press conference was that the social-assistance rates from Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program are much too low for anyone to live off, a position shared by housing and food advocates, along with several municipalities in Ontario.

The group provided a policy brief proposing solutions (pdf), such as: direct, consistent and transparent funding for families; legislation ensuring that disabled people and their chosen representatives are included in any care decisions; and independent oversight of all ministry-funded services for disabled people.

Evoy said that it was a mistake to see these issues as one-offs or isolated to specific workers or group homes.

“We could talk about the individual instances of group-home fires that have resulted in death or the bruises and violence that individual folks experience, but after a while, all of those experiences and the wider kind of political environment add up to tell us a story,” Evoy said.

The DJNO said their next report will focus on the experiences of children in group homes.