Our own disclosure procedure
We ask organizations to write one of these and let it be checked. It would be indefensible to keep ours private, so here it is — including the parts where we are weaker than the standard we publish.
What we are
One person, working from Ottawa. No premises, no staff, no volunteers, and no children in our care. We do not run services, we do not investigate, and we have no statutory powers whatsoever.
That shapes everything below. Almost every institutional disclosure procedure is about an adult standing in front of a child. Ours is about text arriving from a stranger, which is a different problem with different failure modes.
We are not set up to receive disclosures, and we say so.
Our contact form has been deliberately narrowed so that reporting a concern about a child is not one of the things it offers to do, and every route on it points at a service that answers in minutes rather than days. This is not modesty. An organization that accepts messages it cannot answer in time has built a trap.
The legal position
| Jurisdiction | Ontario |
|---|---|
| Statute | Child, Youth and Family Services Act, 2017, s. 125 |
| Who it binds | Kenneth McGrath personally. The duty attaches to the person, not to any organization, and it cannot be delegated. |
| Threshold | Reasonable grounds to suspect. Not proof, not certainty. |
| Age | Mandatory where a child is or appears to be under 16. For 16- and 17-year-olds a report may still be made, and will be. |
| Report to | Children's Aid Society of Ottawa — 613-747-7800, answered 24 hours a day, every day. Calls may be made anonymously. Verified 2026-08-15. |
| Immediate danger | 911 |
Where the child is outside Ottawa, the report goes to the society covering where the child is, found through the OACAS directory or the national directory on our resources page — not to Ottawa by default.
The three cases, decided in advance
Deciding these while calm is the entire point of writing a procedure. Almost everything that arrives will be the first case.
1 · An adult describing their own childhood
This is what most messages will be. There is no duty to report, because the person is an adult and no child is currently at risk.
- Reply within ten working days. Thank them. Do not ask questions.
- Do not ask for detail, evidence, names, dates, or documents. We are not an investigative body and cannot act on any of it.
- Point to survivor support and, if they want it, the documenting material.
- Unless the account indicates a child is at risk from that person now — in which case it becomes case 3, whatever the sender intended.
2 · A general question, worry, or hypothetical
- Answer it, or say we cannot.
- Do not speculate about whether a described situation is abuse. That is exactly the arithmetic this project tells adults not to do.
- Point at a service with capacity we do not have.
3 · A message indicating a child may be at risk now
Same day. Not within ten working days. Same day, on discovery.
- Call the child protection authority covering where the child is. In Ottawa, 613-747-7800. Say plainly that this arrived by email, that the sender may be anonymous, and that we have not verified anything.
- Read out the message in the sender's exact words. Do not summarise, tidy, or interpret it.
- Follow whatever they advise, including if that is to do nothing further.
- Reply to the sender only if replying does not risk the child, and say what was done — never that it was 'passed on' or 'handled'.
- If the child is in immediate danger, 911 first, then the society.
If the sender asks us not to report, we report anyway. We will tell them so, plainly, and we will say it before they get further into an account if there is any chance of it. A duty to report is not waivable by the person who tells you.
If we cannot identify the child at all — anonymous sender, no location, nothing actionable — we still call and describe what we received. Deciding that a report is too thin to make is the authority's judgement, not ours.
What we never do
- Investigate. We do not search, verify, cross-reference, or look anyone up.
- Ask investigative questions. Not who, not when, not what exactly happened.
- Contact anyone named, for any reason, ever.
- Promise confidentiality. We cannot deliver it and saying so would be a betrayal we would then have to commit.
- Delete a message we have reported, even at the sender's request, until the authority confirms it is no longer needed.
- Publish, quote, or repeat anything anyone sends us.
Records
- The only copy is the message in the mailbox. Our web form writes nothing to disk and records no IP address.
- Where a report is made, a dated note is kept of what was received, who was called, when, and what was advised.
- That note is never edited. Anything remembered later is added as a new dated entry.
- Messages that lead to a report are retained for seven years. Others are deleted once the exchange is finished.
- Access is limited to one person, because there is only one person.
Where this procedure is weak
Measured against our own requirements, this project would not reach any tier. We are publishing that rather than waiting until it is flattering.
| Requirement | Our position |
|---|---|
| B1 — a named alternate | Not met. There is one person and no alternate. If he is unreachable, nothing happens until he is reachable. |
| D1 / D2 — training | Not met. No formal disclosure-response training has been completed. |
| D3 — rehearsed aloud | Not met. This procedure has been written, not practised. |
| C2 — external review | Not met. No lawyer or child-protection practitioner has reviewed this page. |
| G4 — children can name adults | Not applicable. No children are in our care. |
This is the single point of failure, and it is a person.
If you have a concern about a child and you are relying on us to act, you are relying on one individual being awake and online. Do not. Call 613-747-7800 in Ottawa, or your local service, and report it yourself. In Ontario the duty is yours personally and telling us does not discharge it.
Review
This procedure is reviewed every twelve months, and immediately if the law changes, if a second person joins, or the first time it is used. Changes are logged on the corrections page.
If something here is wrong, say so — safeguarding@firsttellproject.com, or through the corrections log.