Oakville Children's Home

Oakville Children's Home (OCH) was established in 1985 as an independent licensed service provider. OCH specializes in providing long term care through foster homes. OCH's philosophy:

Our main goal and philosophy at Oakville Children’s Homes is to offer a structured, caring and nurturing environment in which all of the children’s individual needs are met. This provides them an opportunity to meet their full potential in all aspects of their life. We strive to instill a basic understanding of life skills in order to have a variety of options for them once they reach adulthood. The program focus is directed towards the improvement of basic life skills and the integration of the individuals into the community.

OCH is committed to creating a structured and caring environment in which the child’s individual needs are met and where they can strive to meet their full potential. The priority is to normalize and stabilize the child's life to the maximum extent possible. The overall goal is to improve basic life skills and integrate the child into the community. In addition to attending school, where their developmental abilities permit, children participate in cooking, crafts, recreational and social activities.

The OCH program utilizes the foster parent model. Under this model, children develop a sense of belonging and family. One of the features of this model is that it facilitates the development of positive and healthy relationships with parent figures. While the child is in care, the foster parent is an essential part of the child’s success. Foster parents are responsible for the day-to-day care of the child including attending school and medical appointments, and writing various reports. OCH encourages as much communication and openness as possible with the child’s biological family. Overall, the foster home experience serves to strengthen a child's interaction and relationship with his or her natural parents and family.

OCH provides long-term rather than temporary care. The focus on long term care provides children with a stable environment where there is continuity in programming and the opportunity to develop lasting relationships. OCH believes that once accepted into the program the goal is to work with the child, no matter how challenging, to normalize his or her life and facilitate progression in development. The success of this approach is evidenced by the very limited number of placement breakdowns in the past twenty years where a child had to be discharged from the program.

OCH specializes in caring for developmentally challenged, autistic and medically fragile children. Children with the following conditions are currently under our care or have been in the recent past:

• Cerebral palsy
• Dialysis patient (using a nephro dialysis machine)
• Haemophiliac
• Child with a rare skin disease (scleroderma)
• Child with a rare and severe form of congential myasthenic syndrome which requires 24-hour monitoring and use of triology ventilator due to a tracheostomy
• Child with severe hydranencephaly, severe gastroesophageal reflux disease and thoracolumbar scoliosis requiring 24-hour monitoring
• Lennox-Gestaut syndrome
• Use of G and J-tubes for continual 24/7 feeds 

OCH's specialization and successes in providing care for special needs cases has seen an increase in the intake of cases considered extremely medically fragile and cases with a high degree of behavioural issues Placements at OCH have come from various jurisdictions and include the following:

• Durham Children's Aid Society
• Hamilton Children's Aid Society
• Catholic Children's Aid Society
• Children's Aid Society of Toronto
• Haldimand and Norfolk Children's Aid Society
• Hamilton Catholic Children's Aid Society
• Peel Children's Aid Society
• Tikinagan Child and Family Services
• Native and Child Family Services of Toronto

Adult Care Over the past six years, Oakville Children's Home has expanded its care program to include adult residential homes. More information on our Adult Residential Care program can be found here.