“Why Don’t You”: Young People Talk Back to Ontario’s Child Welfare System

By Jessa McAuliffe and Thamer Linklater

Welcome to the Why Don’t You page. Jessa and I are so happy to share this project with you! 

Why Don’t You is part of the Research for Social Change Lab’s Data Justice for Youth in Care project, where we explored how children's and family's data is being gathered, used, and accessed within child welfare. We interviewed two groups of people: workers in child welfare agencies and youth who are, or were, involved in child welfare. Once the interviews with both groups were done, we noticed that they had vastly different things to say about collection and access to data. We wanted to explore the differences more and amplify youth voices.  

We connected with youth who expressed interest in the project and began working throughout the summer of 2023.  We chose to focus on responding to two initiatives: the Child Welfare Redesign and the Ready Set Go project. The redesign was created with the goal of improving the impact of child welfare on children and their families. The initiative has two main goals: keep children with their families and provide youth with adequate support. The Ready Set Go project is part of the redesign. The initiative aims to help youth transition out of care smoothly by providing them with the resources and skills they need to thrive.  

We worked collaboratively on every aspect of the video. The first step was to familiarize ourselves with the policies and share our experiences in child welfare. To come up with the poem’s message and images we created word maps. From there we wrote the poem as a collective, using the lab’s whiteboard. Youth expressed interest and knowledge of plant care. So, we focussed on using plants and nature imagery to express how unique and strong youth are and how each child’s needs are unique.  

We hope you enjoy the video and find some hope or understanding in it.  

Thamer, Jessa, and youth in (or previously in) care