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In his latest Field Note, CAFC President and CEO Jeffrey Schiffer, PhD, explores why talent alone isn’t enough. For young people connected to care, access to networks, experience, and opportunity can make the difference between education and a meaningful career.
As my kids, along with others across Canada, returned to school, I’ve been thinking about what it really takes for a young person to move from the classroom into a career and build a life on their own terms.
For young people connected to care, that pathway can be much harder to navigate.
In Ontario, just 46% of young people raised in the child welfare system graduate from high school, compared with 83% of their peers. Participation in post-secondary education is roughly half that of the general youth population.
These numbers are concerning. But they tell us nothing about the talent, ambition, or potential of young people from care.
Talent isn’t the issue. Access is.
Access to the right support at the right time. To relationships and networks. To education, work exposure and experience, and opportunities that build confidence and open doors.
And increasingly, I believe we need to think about those opportunities not as individual interventions, but as part of one connected pathway from education to meaningful employment.
Building the pathway, not just the program.
At Children’s Aid Foundation of Canada, we have spent decades investing in education and employment opportunities for young people connected to care.
One of the things we are learning is that there is rarely a single pivotal moment that determines whether a young person succeeds.
A scholarship matters. A mentor matters. Work experience matters—exposure to different careers matters.
But their greatest potential comes when those opportunities build on one another.
That means helping a young person remain engaged in high school, supporting their transition to post-secondary education or training, building employment readiness, and then creating opportunities to gain meaningful workplace experience and professional networks.
It requires continuity.
And that is where philanthropy has an important role to play.
Using philanthropy to discover what works
Complex social challenges rarely have simple solutions. We need room to experiment, learn, and adapt.
Philanthropy can create that room.
Through our partnership with The Northpine Foundation, we are investing in ventures designed around specific outcomes, bringing organizations and sectors together and measuring what happens so we can strengthen promising approaches.
The early education results are encouraging.
Our education ventures in Ontario and Manitoba are on track to reach 770 young people. Since the Venture Fund began in January 2025, 114 young people have graduated from high school or are on track to graduate, 105 have entered post-secondary education, and another 21 have been re-engaged to complete high school credits.
These aren’t simply numbers we want to grow. They are evidence we can learn from.
The question is: What is helping young people reach these milestones, and how do we create more of it?
That same thinking needs to extend beyond graduation.
Through Youth Works, supported by RBC Future Launch, Minto and State Street Foundation, thousands of young people have had opportunities to develop employment skills while also receiving support for needs that can affect their ability to participate, including housing, mental health, food, and transportation.
And through employment ventures supported by The Northpine Foundation, we are testing what can happen when young people have opportunities to build professional experience and networks. The Art of Work, for example, provides a four-month workplace experience where young people can build their résumés, earn professional references, and gain real traction in the labour market.
These initiatives operate at different points along the pathway. The opportunity now is to connect them.
What if continuity became the expectation? Labour market attachment develops over time.
Early experiences build confidence. Sustained participation builds stability. Meaningful employment creates greater opportunity for long-term economic security.
Yet too often, the systems and programs around young people are fragmented precisely when continuity matters most.
I think philanthropy can help change that.
We can invest at multiple points along the pathway. We can connect organizations and sectors that may not otherwise work together. We can test new approaches, learn quickly, build evidence, and help reduce the risk of investing in solutions before they are ready to grow.
And when something proves effective, we have a collective responsibility to ask what it will take to sustain it.
Because strengthening education and employment pathways for young people from care isn’t only an investment in individual young people. It’s an investment in Canada’s future workforce, communities, and resilience.
So I’ll end with a question I’ve been asking recently:
What if every young person who received a scholarship also knew there was meaningful work experience waiting for them on the other side?
We aren’t there yet.
But connecting those opportunities, from education through to employment, gives us something important to build toward.
The talent is already there.
Our job is to make sure the pathway is too.
Jeffrey Schiffer
President and CEO
