I would look to the health care system, which is predominantly core-funded. If we had a revolution of our social care system that really understood, instead of our social needs or our departments of social services, whether they're federal funders or provincial, becoming sort of a department of leftovers.... When it comes to budgeting, we think of health care, education, justice, and infrastructure. When we get to social needs, there seems to be a sense that it's left over.
If we were to instead think of the social departments as proactive health departments, we could reframe our understanding. In the health care system, when they core-fund programs, there are annual reviews, but I think there's a subtle understanding that health care costs go nowhere but up. I think we could see a better system if there were multi-year funding with annual reviews. I also think that, much like an audit system functions for the financial sector, an assistance base of research from the funder to actually help with evaluating the programs would also be really welcomed.
In our agencies, as you rightly say, we spend a lot of time trying to articulate our programs year after year, every year, and if it takes me an average of 40 hours to write my major proposal every year, I lose a week of staff time for me if I'm the writer. But that also includes a number of other staff who are clerical and so on. We lose 40 hours of productivity for two to three staff every year.