Good morning, everybody. My name is Deepak Soni. I'm the executive director of Corbrook. We're a Toronto-based agency funded by the Province of Ontario.
Corbrook has been supporting people with physical and developmental disabilities to achieve independence, self-reliance, and become full participating members of our society for over 62 years. Our vision is simple: to awaken abilities.
Corbrook prides itself as a centre of learning. We offer many programs and services to people with disabilities in order to empower them with choices and opportunities. We have been assisting people in finding and maintaining jobs for over 25 years. We offer a number of programs that are geared toward employment, including employment counselling and placement, transition to work, literacy, and our new partnership with Centennial College in food packaging and processing.
I'd like to highlight three main points today that identify some of the challenges and successes on how to enhance the employment of people with disabilities and the role the federal government can play in supporting this role.
First of all, one of the biggest challenges we face, and I think Maureen mentioned it, is the restrictive funding model. Corbrook provides a successful transition-to-work program that offers people the necessary skills to find employment. The program focuses on teaching not only the technical skills related to the job, but some of the softer skills, such as issues relating to hygiene, dressing, attendance, sexuality, etc., that are essential in maintaining a job. Through this program, we also help to find employment and provide people with job coaching and training skills directly on the job.
However, given the funding that comes from the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Community and Social Services, the program is only restricted to people who have a developmental disability. This restrictive nature of funding means that many other people with other disabilities are not offered the program unless they pay for it on their own. Every year we turn away hundreds of people. Last fiscal year it was 300 people with mental health issues, acquired disabilities, and physical disabilities that did not qualify for the program.
Corbrook also provides a literacy and learning program that focuses on building literacy in people who have never had the opportunity of a formal education. This program stresses on building math, English, and life skills, such as money management. Participants of this program also attend our transition-to-work program and are extremely successful when it comes to finding and maintaining employment. However, this program is also offered with the same restrictive funding model as our transition-to-work program and is only open to people with development disabilities.
I look to the federal government and HRSDC to support agencies like Corbrook and broaden our funding base so that we are able to support more people in finding employment.
I will identify a couple of successes and some unique partnerships that we have that really have achieved strong results.
The first one is our partnership with Centennial College. Research has shown that a person with a disability is successful in securing and maintaining employment if they not only have the training or education behind them, but the work experience to go along with it. Many people with disabilities, unfortunately, do not have this opportunity. Corbrook in collaboration with Centennial College in Toronto have created a certificate program in food packaging and processing that addresses this issue. People with disabilities get the opportunity to attend a community college. The best part is that the program is non-segregated. They learn the theory related to food management and preparation at the college, while getting the practical experience related to food handling and packaging in the Corbrook state-of-the-art clean room. In the second semester, Corbrook helps people find co-op placements in the food and hospitality sector. On completion of the program, students are awarded a certificate in food processing and packaging.
Students pay $3,000 annually to attend the program. The fees are shared between Corbrook and Centennial and they barely meet the expenses of the program, but it is something that our boards have decided collaboratively to work on.
The program has the capacity for 15 students every year. The needs are so great that in our first year of offering it, there were 10 students on the wait list and 25 who could not afford the program as they did not have any financial means to pay for it. Unfortunately, the program doesn't quality for provincial financial assistance. Of the 15 students enrolled this year, 13 have ended up with employment with their co-op employers. This is an example of a unique program that, unfortunately, has no funding from any level of government, yet is so effective in breaking down barriers to employment.
Funding for programs such as this would allow even more people to become successful in finding employment, as right now it's limited to those who can afford to pay for it. Many people with disabilities often do not have the means to pay for such programs.
Our second partnership that I'd like to highlight is at Starwood Hotels. Corbrook, through an RFP process, was awarded a small amount of provincial money to develop an innovative and modern employer awareness tool. This tool, which is a pilot, will provide real-life scenarios, ideas, and strategies for HR managers and hiring managers who are engaged in employing and working with people with disabilities.
What's unique about this approach is that it gets away from the generic sensitivity training offered in a class-like environment, which can be costly for a lot of employers. Instead, it will be devised to be accessed by the click of an icon on a manager's desktop.