Employment: The First Option in Support

On Oct. 23 the Canadian Association for Community Living (CACL) held its annual general meeting in Halifax and the need to realign disability funding across the country from sheltered workshops and day programs to meaningful employment supports was a key discussion topic.

When associations for community living were first created decades ago by families as alternatives to institutionalization for their loved ones who have a disability, education alternatives were developed for those who weren’t included in traditional schools.

As these children grew into adulthood, the associations and families designed day programs and sheltered workshops for their sons and daughters because for many, the traditional work force was not seen as an option.

Affordable housing options and support for independent living evolved over time, as well.

“These are bricks and mortar-type services,” that started the way to build an inclusive society, explains CACL policy and programs officer Tyler Hnatuk.

Hnatuk led the research and development of a recent report examining the transition from day programs and sheltered workshops to real and meaningful employment supports for people who have disabilities, because he says progress towards inclusion has slowed in recent years.

“Over the past decade we’ve really found ourselves in a position where our vision for inclusion of people with disabilities outstretched the actual service capacity,” Tyler explains.

“There’s been an acknowledgement that our progress has stalled.”

A patchwork of programs kept alive by a maze of funding streams across the country is what is left, and the CACL is determined to support a new approach that encourages everyone to consider employment initiatives as the first option for support of a person who has a disability.

In every jurisdiction in Canada, sheltered workshops exist and in every jurisdiction there are examples of highly successful supported employment programs and that, explains Hnatuk, is “why we took on this research to try and help identify the best path forward to full social and economic inclusion.”

The CACL report, Achieving Social and Economic Inclusion: from Segregation to Employment First, is a detailed explanation of what is working well in terms of employment supports, and it forms the basis of the policy stance taken at the CACL meeting in Halifax .

That stance calls for a reinvestment and streamlining of programs to assist people in achieving meaningful and equitable employment, something Hnatuk says is “vital” to social and economic inclusion.

To learn more about the CACL and its research into employment first, visit this link.

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Axiom News provides Stakeholder News Services to Community Living Ontario. This article appears here as it was originally published at CommunityLivingOntario.ca. If you would like to learn more about our Stakeholder News Services, contact peter@axiomnews.ca.