Open Letter · October 2026
No Child Should Be the Care Plan
An open letter to Ontario’s Minister of Health on the children quietly caring for our elders
October 2026
The Honourable Sylvia Jones
Deputy Premier and Minister of Health
Government of Ontario
Dear Minister,
We write about Ontarians who appear in no hospital discharge plan, no home care schedule and no ministry budget, yet who are the hidden backbone of the provincial health care system. They are children.
Across this province, young people who should be doing homework, playing sports or simply being young are helping grandparents out of bed, sorting medications, interpreting at medical appointments and keeping watch through the night. They do it out of love. They do it without pay, without training and, very often, without anyone in the system noticing.
What the numbers tell us
Statistics Canada’s most detailed portrait of young unpaid caregivers, drawn from the General Social Survey, found that about 1.9 million Canadians aged 15 to 29, or 27 per cent of that age group, had provided care in the previous year. Ailing grandparents were the most frequent recipients of their help. Among unpaid caregivers aged 15 to 24, nearly half (47 per cent) were caring for a grandparent.
The toll is real. Among young unpaid caregivers giving ten or more hours a week, 37 per cent said their studies had suffered, 54 per cent felt worried or anxious, and 41 per cent were losing sleep.
Consider, too, what those figures leave out. The survey begins at age 15. A twelve-year-old giving her grandfather his insulin is not counted anywhere. The data are also more than a decade old. We cannot protect children we have not chosen to see.
How a child becomes the care plan
It rarely begins with a decision. A grandparent is discharged home sooner than the family expected. Home care hours fall short of the need. Parents are at work, often at more than one job. The gap is filled by whoever is home after school. Gradually, the system comes to rely on the child without ever naming that reliance.
The weight falls hardest on families already stretched: newcomer households where a grandchild is the only fluent English or French speaker, single-parent homes, rural and northern communities far from services, and Black, Indigenous and racialized families whose elders too often meet a health system that does not speak their language.
Helping a grandparent can be an act of love and a meaningful part of growing up, and many young unpaid caregivers say it has strengthened their bond. Our concern is not the child who helps. It is the child who is relied upon, whose unpaid labour has quietly become a structural part of how Ontario cares for its seniors.
What we ask of the Ministry
Ask the question. At every hospital discharge and home care assessment that depends on family support, require care coordinators to ask who will provide that support, and whether that person is under 18. A plan that depends on a minor should be treated as an incomplete plan.
Close the gap with paid care. Where a child is identified as a primary caregiver, direct Ontario Health atHome to reassess the file and increase publicly funded care, so that no child’s hours stand in for a professional’s.
Give young carers a right to be assessed. England’s Children and Families Act 2014 gives young carers the right to an assessment of their own needs. Ontario can do the same, and lead the country.
Count them. Work with Statistics Canada and Ontario researchers to measure caregiving by children under 15, so that policy rests on evidence rather than silence.
Fund support in every region. Community-based young carers programs exist in parts of the province. Every young carer in Ontario, wherever they live, should be able to reach respite, peer support and a trusted adult who knows their situation.
Work across government. Partner with the Ministry of Education so that schools recognize caregiving as a reason for absence or lateness, and respond with support rather than discipline.
A choice no family should face
Ontario’s seniors deserve dignified care in their final years. Ontario’s children deserve their childhoods. These are not competing goods, and no family should be forced to trade one for the other. The province has the tools to ensure that neither is sacrificed.
We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you and your officials, and to convene the families, frontline workers and young carers who understand this issue best.
Respectfully,
Saron Gebresellassi, J.D., M.Ed., B.A., N.P., Cert. TESOL
Principal, Gebresellassi Private Office
cc: Minister of Education, Government of Ontario; Minister for Seniors and Accessibility, Government of Ontario
Sources
Bleakney, A. (2014). “Young Canadians providing care.” Spotlight on Canadians: Results from the General Social Survey, Statistics Canada, Cat. 89-652-X. www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-652-x/89-652-x2014003-eng.htm
Children and Families Act 2014 (UK), Part 5, s. 96 (young carers’ needs assessments).