By Jacquie Gahagan, Dale Kirby, Mary Rita Holland, and Melanie M. Doucet Youth in Canada’s child welfare system need stronger government leadership to improve educational outcomes. Fewer than half of youth who have spent time in foster care — known as care-experienced youth — complete high school and even fewer attend or complete post-secondary education. These educational gaps can have lasting consequences for the life chances of care-experienced youth, including higher rates of unemployment, poverty, homelessness, criminalization and other longstanding disparities. Education falls under the provincial and territorial jurisdiction. However, the absence of strong federal oversight — including the lack of a co-ordinated national data collection and reporting process — contributes to the current patchwork of data that exists. As a result, we lack a clear understanding of which publicly…
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