Ontario Works in the County
One of the most important functions that the Legal Clinic performs is helping people who are having income maintenance problems. This essentially encompasses people who are trying to get onto Ontario Works (OW) or who have been on OW but have been temporarily suspended or cut off. OW is available to residents of Ontario who are in immediate financial need and who are willing to participate in employment assistance activities.
Given that OW is based out of and administered in Guelph, we thought it may be beneficial to check with OW to see how they serve Wellington County residents. Anna McGregor, the Employment Services Manager, kindly responded to a list of questions that I sent to her.
OW used to administer their system by way of home visits. In 2002, this changed with the introduction of the new Provincial OW computer system. Home visits were no longer possible because of the required access to the computer system. However, where there are medical issues, an OW Caseworker can visit the participant in their own home. OW has participated in a rural transportation strategy for the past several years and have finalized a method of transporting rural people through the use of the Volunteer Driver Service. Wellington County Social Services provides $95,000 per year for this service.
The main reason that an OW worker would pay a home visit is if the participant is just not physically able to get around. If the participant is travelling for any other purposes, it would be expected they would access the Volunteer Driver Service. When it has been established the participant truly does not have any access to transport and they are unable to access the Volunteer Driver Service, a Caseworker will visit them at their home. However, home visits are rarely performed and rarely requested by participants.
OW acknowledges that the need to reschedule appointments on a regular basis is significant but they note that missed appointment numbers are just as high proportionately in the City as they are in the County. Participants often do not indicate their reason for non attendance.
OW insist that they recognize the additional barriers participants in rural communities face. In addition to loneliness and isolation, County residents face a lack of services, including healthcare and a lack of employment opportunities.
posted by Richard Jordan @ 11:27 AM
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1 Comments:
Media Release
The Evidence Is In
Poverty’s Smoke and Mirrors, Part 2
To see part 1 http://www.special-need-child-canada.com/povertys-smoke-and-mirrors.html
The article above went out to the main media and approximately 65 other print news media starting September 21 2008. It was also put on the World Wide Web.
To my knowledge it was only printed in 3 Ontario news papers in the Letters to the Editor section.
1) Hamilton’s, Mountain News
2) Hamilton’s, Stoney Creek News
3) London’s, The London Free Press
Thank you to these three papers for caring enough about people that live in poverty to print this article.
As of today November 06 2008 the Ontario government has only posted old outdated directives dated Sept 2001.
http://www.mcss.gov.on.ca/mcss/english/pillars/social/directives/ow_policy_directives.html
Obviously these directives are of no use to anyone simply because of the fact they are outdated and the ministry is now using the July 2008 up to date directives but has not shared them with the public.
You may remember Welfare Legal was so offended by this abuse we offered $100.00 to anyone that could produce a copy of the latest Ontario Works directive 7.4.
As of this date no one has collected the $100.00. Welfare Legal now has a copy of the new directives that the government has not shared.
We take the position that this is the most serious kind of abuse by our government to implement new policies but not allow those most in need to have access to them. The only reason the government has given for this abuse is that the Ontario Government has not prepared a French version of these directives.
This is a Human Rights violation, among others, to implement a secrete version of the directives and not share them with the public and not to have a French version available.
As we have stated before the Ontario government has in fact been cutting the benefits of Ontario Works, (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program, (ODSP) recipients without letting the general public aware of these cuts.
The latest cuts that have become public are the cuts to benefits to grandparents that are caring for their own grandchildren, who many had, have been apprehended by the Children’s Aid Society (CAS). The grand parent’s complaints were heard loud and clear the government seems to have withdrawn these policy changes.
The new directive 7.4 and others shows more cuts that the public is not aware of yet.
One of these cuts shows that the Ontario government no longer supports volunteering here in Ontario. In the old outdated directives dated September 2001, the government used to give a small benefit to those recipients that had to do volunteer work as a condition of eligibility for OW. These cuts also affect those who wish to do volunteer work and are disabled on ODSP as well.
Are volunteers no longer needed here in Ontario?
These cuts which are ongoing, have been made to help pay for the meager increases to OW and ODSP of 2%. They are also part of the government’s bigger plan, to upload the cost of OW and ODSP from the municipality to the province and to pay for its poverty reduction strategy.
At the end of the day the government will save millions of dollars in benefits that the former Mike Harris Tories said people on OW and ODSP were entitled to. Does this make sense to anyone?
This story gets much, much worse. It turns out that the aboriginal community in Ontario had the foresight not to allow its members to be subjected to the policies and procedures put in place by the Mike Harris government, when they bought the draconian computer program from Anderson Consulting now Accenture. The cost of that program was $400 million and rising. This program was designed to cut people off of benefits automatically, with no human contact. There seems to be 2 classes of people being governed differently here, and what are the costs?
It would seem they were allowed to have their own computer program made up by a private company called AD Morrison.
http://www.admorrison.com/
A private professional researcher contacted Welfare Legal in an attempt to collect the $100.00 offered for the latest Ontario Works directive 7.4 and alerted us to a Pandora’s Box. You will see on the home page of AD Morrison’s site there is a link to “Latest Directives”. This link contained a third set of OW directives that was not available to the general public.
After Welfare Legal contacted the ministry to see if this in fact was the latest and new directive 7.4, the ministry contacted us with a reply that had nothing to do with our request. Then out of the blue this link was taken of the site.
After gathering all the evidence we soon learned that the Ontario government had not been keeping these new directive from the public since July 2008, they had in fact been hiding them starting in December 2005 and no one new about it. At least no one that has come forward so far.
There has been no response from any legal clinic or private paralegal in Ontario showing that they new about this breach of the Human Rights Code by our provincial government. If anyone was aware of this why didn’t they take it to the media? Does nobody care about this abuse? Does nobody care about eliminating poverty?
It is interesting to note that the government has even changed the directive numbers to confuse us even more once we were allowed to become aware of them.
September 2001 shows directive 31.0, the out dated benefits that we all are aware of.
December 2005 shows
7.3 is EMPLOYMENT AND PARTICIPATION BENEFITS
7.4 is COMMUNITY START UP AND MAINTENANCE BENEFIT
July 2008 shows
7.4 is EMPLOYMENT AND PARTICIPATION BENEFITS
7.5 is COMMUNITY START UP AND MAINTENANCE BENEFIT
For a copy of these directives
http://owcorruption.blogspot.com/
How can the Ontario government say it is attempting to alleviate poverty when it is secretly cutting the benefits of those most in need? (Reverse Robin Hood)
Ron Payne
Welfare Legal
Hamilton, Ontario
Phone 905-253-0205
E-mail welfarelegal2004@hotmail.com
Blog http://welfarelegal.blogspot.com/
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