Unmanageable is the unknown story of Canada's training schools and the generations of vulnerable children who survived terrible abuses there from the 1930’s to the 1980s. Kids between 8 and 18 could be sentenced to provincial training schools for unmanageability, vagrancy, or just showing signs of delinquency. The schools had roots in the colonial poor houses, asylums, penitentiaries, industrial schools, and Indigenous residential schools. Child Savers, reformers who helped poor, mostly white children, led to the social work profession, the child welfare system, The Children’s Aid Society, a foster home system, and homes for unwed mothers.

Kids in training schools were physically and mentally abused and many went on to a life of crime or substance abuse. In 1989 training school survivors began to tell their stories, staff were convicted of abuse, and victims got financial redress. Juvenile detention centres replaced training schools in the 1980s, and youth justice laws were reformed; but kids can still be taken from families and put into foster care or group homes. The personal stories told in this documentary reveal the horrific experiences of many children in training schools.