Quebec’s Youth Protection Services (DPJ) are struggling to meet the needs of children in difficulty and are making an urgent plea for a strengthened social safety net.
The annual report from youth protection directorates across Quebec, presented Thursday morning in Quebec City, shows that social pressures have been creating more complex situations and an intensification of needs among families and, by extension, children for some years now.
The report also bears an evocative title that goes far beyond the central scope of action of the DPJ: “Children: still a priority?”.
“We need to do something, but together as a society,” said National Director of Child Protection Lesley Hill. “We need to find a way to reach out to other networks—daycares, community organizations, schools, citizens—because everyone has a role to play in protecting children, to see how we can better support these children and families as a society, who need our full attention, our humanity, and our empathy, but also the services to which they are entitled.”
Strengthen the social safety net
The director of youth protection for the a Côte-Nord, Nadia Denis, added: “It’s all the services surrounding families and children. When we talk about services, whether it’s better equipping parents or offering respite. There are parents whose children have great needs. They need respite. It’s all the programs that aim to reduce social inequalities.”
“If the Youth Protection Services (DPJ) intervenes, it cannot intervene alone,” Denis reminded everyone. “It needs community organizations, it needs mental health services, addiction services, and food banks. We all need to work together. So, it’s the social safety net that needs to be strengthened around these families.”
The report reveals mental fragility among young people, more than half of whom show signs of social anxiety that affects their well-being, development and academic success, and a lack of services to help them.
Even before discussing their own intervention, they are calling on public authorities to invest more to support basic needs such as food, housing and an adequate income, to consolidate existing services, to strengthen prevention and to better support children’s living environments such as schools and CPEs, in particular.
Statistically, the 2025-2026 report shows 144,321 reports involving 107,273 children – representing 6.4 per cent of all those under 18 in the province – an increase of 1.4 per cent compared to the previous year. However, the number of reports substantiated (39,661, or 27 per cent of the total) was still down by just under 2,000 compared to the previous year. This decrease in substantiated reports has been consistent for the past five years.
Slightly more than half (52.1 per cent) of the children taken into care by the Youth Protection Services (DPJ) in the past year remained in their family environment, and nearly one in five (18.3%) were placed with relatives. The reasons for taking children into care vary, but neglect (30.1 per cent) and a serious risk of neglect (17.9 per cent) account for nearly half of the cases. The other most frequent causes are psychological maltreatment (15 per cent), exposure to domestic violence (10.3%), and physical abuse (9.6 per cent).
Mélissa Desjardins, director of youth protection for the Bas-Saint-Laurent, reiterated her concerns about the lack of support prior to interventions by the DPJ (Director of Youth Protection): “This assessment worries us. There are many children and families who are struggling. We must get back to basics, prioritize responding to fundamental needs to reduce stressors and improve the living conditions of our children and families. We must consolidate and strengthen universal, preventative, and community services to intervene earlier in a child’s life trajectory. Protecting children is a collective responsibility.”
Crime continues to rise
Regarding the other aspect of the DPJ’s work, namely intervention with young offenders, the data shows that 10,507 adolescents were involved in interventions under the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), representing a 4.1 per cent increase compared to last year. The DPJ is somewhat relieved that this upward trend has been slowing for the past few years, compared to increases of 7 per cent the previous year and 15 per cent two years ago. However, the report notes that the overall increase has been 47.2 per cent over the past five years, whereas there had been a steady decline over the previous decade.
The most frequent offences are assault (21.7 per cent), breach of undertaking, order or condition (12.5 per cent), theft (9.6 per cent) and threats (9.2 per cent).
Mauricie-Centre-du-Québec: ‘Do not accept the unacceptable‘
It has been very difficult to obtain answers from stakeholders regarding the abnormally high number of forced adoptions in the Mauricie-Centre-du-Québec region, which was the subject of a reprimand from the Commission des droits de la personne et de la jeunesse (CDPDJ). A CDPDJ investigation revealed that the regional institution fostered a culture that favoured adoption based on incomplete files or even knowingly false information provided by staff, in violation of the law and the rights of parents.
“We think it’s just as serious as you do,” Hill finally replied to a reporter, “and we’re working together not only to ensure that situations like this don’t happen again, but to really try to accelerate the harmonization of practices in Quebec.”
Hill assured that there will be “national adoption guidelines as early as this fall. We will also have our life project reference framework, which is really the process that leads to the decision of what we do for each child in terms of their life plan. But that too will be released this fall.”
Hill clarified that “harmonizing practices” was part of the response to the slip-up that occurred in this region, the other part of that response being “not accepting the unacceptable.”
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
