Status of Women Committee on June 8th, 2017

[Jenny Greensmith]

We did talk to each other about this before this morning. We are not necessarily an organization that has a lot to do with federal benefits, being funded provincially through the Ministry of Children and Youth Services.

As you say, tax rebates are fine if you pay tax. There is a gap between what children are eligible for now and what they're eligible for once they turn 18, 19, or 21, depending on what the cut-off is. It crosses social welfare. It crosses health. It crosses education. Parents often feel that this is a point where they need to pull back on their work hours. To be honest, they have respite when their children are in school all day. When their children leave school and are not intellectually able to participate in some of the college programs, there is little else. Often there is not enough money to keep that young adult stimulated and socially part of a group. Parents at that point may need to pull back on their work hours or simply decide that one parent—and very often there aren't two parents—will need to stay home with the young adult because they cannot be left home alone.

Perhaps we should address that, maybe with a supplementary benefit of some sort. Often these benefits are tied to the child, the young adult, the ODSP recipient. I don't know of anything that actually supports the woman who makes that choice—or who has to make that choice.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Jenny.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good.

We'll go now to Ms. Damoff for seven minutes.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thanks, all of you, for being here today.

I'm going to start with the ladies at Pathways.

You've talked a lot about the challenges that families face when they have children living with disabilities. You didn't talk at all about the young women living with disabilities and the challenges they face. I know that DAWN, the DisAbled Women's Network, says that women living with disabilities have a 75% unemployment rate.

I'm wondering if you could talk at all about the individuals themselves. In other work I've done, I've heard about teenage experiences in terms of preparing for the workplace. I see that you run a program for 19-plus young adults. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.

[Jenny Greensmith]

Sure, and thank you for doing the research to discover our new lifelong learning program. That was in direct response to what families told us, to what young people told us, that “We want something to do that is not considered just being babysat, like day care, once we leave school.” They obviously feel the worry, the concern. These young adults may have disabilities—cognitive disabilities, developmental disabilities—but that does not mean they do not worry about their situation or about their parents' situation.

We've had a great campaign running in the Sarnia-Lambton community, which I think has spread across the province, called “The Real People Campaign”. It introduced families and their adult children who talked about the stresses and strains. Some of these families have actually had to drop their children off at emergency or at a community living day care simply because the family could not manage to look after that child anymore, or because the care they provide is beyond the resources of the family.

We do run a lot of programs for our youth and teens, preparing them for the transition to adulthood, preparing them for—

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Is there anything the federal government can do to support you in that?

Also, I want to give a shout-out to Sarnia. The Ontario Partnership Council on Employment Opportunities for People with Disabilities has mentioned Sarnia as a leader in the province in terms of employment.

I've spoken to my colleague Marilyn Gladu about that, because you are recognized there as one of the leaders.

For young women who are living with disabilities, is there anything the federal government can do to support those opportunities to find paid employment?

[Jenny Greensmith]

I'm sure there is. In terms of what we call paid employment, I know that Sarnia has done well. Locally, we have a number of Tim Hortons—I hope it's okay to advertise—that do provide those opportunities. A number of businesses engage students over the summertime with the support of Community Living, and some of those businesses have been able to keep those individuals on.

We would like to see young women with disabilities have that full access to any type of employment that they are suited for, and not to be pigeonholed, perhaps, into cleaning jobs or other sorts of work like that.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Yes, or to be volunteering in a position where, if it were anyone else, they would be paid for that position.

[Jenny Greensmith]

You are very correct. At Pathways, however, we do encourage youth and teens to volunteer because that does give them the work experience, but we really hope that they won't end up volunteering as their job, because that's not fair.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I'm going to turn to our other witnesses, but if you do think of any supports the federal government could provide for that, please do provide them to the committee.

[Jenny Greensmith]

We will.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

Dr. Wilson, thank you for being with us as well. I don't have that much time left, but I did want to ask you briefly if you see the value in mentorship programs for young indigenous students who want to pursue post-secondary education. In my community of Oakville, Sheridan College has a centre for indigenous students. It's probably understaffed, but they have seen some success in providing that support. I'm wondering if you could speak to that a bit.

[Dr. Alex Wilson]

Yes, absolutely. I think any kind of support like that works—mentorship programs, transition-year programs—but again, we need a bigger overhaul, a big-picture overhaul, and these are solutions that will just chip away. They're not really going to cause a huge shift.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I'm not trying to lead you here, but I am a little bit, because when I've spoken to the folks at the indigenous studies program at Sheridan College, they've said they get solely provincial funding.

[Dr. Alex Wilson]

Right, yes.

It would be fantastic if there were federal support for programming that is working, such as mentorship, but also for land-based programming, because that's another theme we're seeing now. People are really needing and wanting land-based education.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I only have about 20 seconds left, so I'll end it there. Thanks to all of you. If you think of anything afterwards, please don't hesitate to send it to the committee.

[Dr. Alex Wilson]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good.

Thank you for the shout-out for Sarnia—Lambton. I also want to let you know that Bob Vansickle, from Community Living there, who is pioneering this program to get disabled people into the workforce and has been rolling it out globally, is going to be with us next week, so that will be fun.

We're going to go now to my colleague Ms. Vecchio for five minutes.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you very much.

I really appreciate your coming and taking the time to speak to us.

I'll start with the Pathways Health Centre for Children. One thing I bring to this job is that I have worked for a former member of Parliament. His entire focus was on customer service. In the office, he really made us look at what was available. I'm wondering if you guys are aware of the canadabenefits.gc.ca website. I'll start with that simple question.

[Jennifer Howell]

No, I'm not. I'll be writing that down and looking into it.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Yes, please do.

The reason I ask is that I'm thinking that this is one of our biggest things. It's that we actually have programs and websites available depending on your age, your marital status, whether or not you have children, whether you're living with a mental disability, or if you want to go back to school. We have a variety of different programs. This is available and is specific to each and every province. You just plug in your province and plug in all the identifiers that you feel would be part of your profile. What I'm thinking is that you're on the ground and this website has been around for years. As a Canadian government, we obviously are not doing enough to make sure that people on the ground know about these sorts of things.

The point there is.... I just went to the website as we were talking, and looked at it in terms of a single woman with a disabled child and a variety of other things, such as wanting to go back to school, and as someone who was renting. There were 48 different sites that it sent me to. That said, if someone has a disabled child and is already having an issue, there are 48 websites they have to go to in order to do research. So what do you do on the ground when it comes to advocacy to help families out?

[Jennifer Howell]

I can speak to that. If I look back before I was working at Pathways and finding out that my child had autism and connecting with Autism Ontario, I remember someone coming and telling me that funding was available and then leaving. The forms are very detailed, and it takes a long time to fill them out. The chances of a mother filling those forms out are next to none.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

They don't have time, right?

[Jennifer Howell]

They don't have time, and they can't answer the questions so that someone can get a full picture of what their life is like. One of the things Pathways does to support families is to help them with the form for special services. The form can take up to two hours to fill out, so if we think a family has a good chance to qualify for support, we ask them what they think would work. We try to set up a meeting, we fix a place and time, and then we fill out the forms for them.

This way, they can sit back and we can talk to them and pull out the necessary information. We can accurately document what is happening in their lives and help to pull the information out. It's very hard for a parent to fill out some of these forms, especially the ones for special services at home, because it makes a parent feel that they're criticizing their child and their life, even though they're not. A lot of parents become very emotional, because they don't want anyone to think their child is a burden.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Yes.