Community human services

 Alberta’s community human services sector plays a vital role in supporting families, building healthy communities and strengthening our economy. Thousands of people work in every town and city in this province to make sure that people get access to programs to help parents learn, provide kids with enriching experiences, help people affected by family violence, and ensure that children and adults with disabilities can live with dignity.  Excellent community groups like the Boys and Girls Clubs, HIV Agencies and Alberta’s Home Visitation Network play a vital role in preventing social and health problems that would otherwise cost other government ministries significant money and resources.

The current situation

• Most community human service agencies are struggling to address the growing demand for their services as public investment has not kept pace with the growth of the population or the economy since cuts to social programs occurred in the 1990s. For example, many women’s shelters continue to turn people away as they do not have space to address the demand
• Excellent preventative programs like home visitation and the Boys and Girls Clubs reach only a fraction of the families who would really benefit from their programs
• Community agencies have been facing an on-going problem of retaining and attracting qualified staff. The gap between the funding they receive for wages and benefits and the pay received by equivalent staff in the private sector and government programs continues to widen. The government did contribute additional funding last year to address the low wages paid by community agencies, but these wage enhancements for most workers were not more than the rate of inflation. While the province has supported publicity campaigns to encourage people into the sector, it has not laid out a comprehensive plan to reduce the gap and provide competitive wages for community agencies
• Most regional Persons with Developmental Disabilities (PDD) boards in Alberta have recently announced they are reducing the amount of funds for community agencies effective January 2010. While community organizations are trying to stand up to the planned cuts to their contracts so that adults with development disabilities do not lose programs and supports, some organizations have already had to cut programs and staffing and turn away clients they are unable to serve
• Families with children or adults with disabilities are really struggling to get the quality care they need for their loved ones. In fact, many parents are unable to work as they need to provide care to their children themselves or are under extreme stress juggling the demands of providing care if they are trying to work
• Instead of investing in the expansion of training and professional certification programs, the province is no longer requiring child and youth care workers to be certified
• Vulnerable Albertans may remain in hospital, hotel rooms, or institutional care longer, as community services do not have the qualified staffing capacity to meet the demand
• The province is moving towards a funding system for families and relatives to be responsible for hiring caregivers directly.  While self-managed care is an innovative option that can work for certain families, many will be still caught in the struggle to find and train their own qualified staff without additional support
• Rather than working together to develop long-term plans to address the critical sustainability issues in human services, the province is moving toward new funding structures, including hourly fee for service models that will make it very difficult for many non-profit community agencies to survive, due to difficulty accessing lines of credit required to cover costs up-front, increased administrative burdens and less flexibility to respond to more complex needs

Cuts will hurt families, the community and the economy

The continued lack of a long-term plan to support community human service programs will have a detrimental effect on the vital services community agencies provide. More people will be turned away from women’s shelters, more children will not be able to access community programs, and children and adults with disabilities will not receive the care and support they need. The effort to attract and retain quality staffing is already critical, and if the government reduces funding or fails to address the issues when the need is greatest, then the crisis will become more severe.

Investing in community agencies and programs for families and for children and adults with disabilities will:

• Expand access to important and cost-effective community programs and prevent many more expensive costs to other government departments
• Provide competitive wages for the qualified staff needed to work in community agencies and address the high staff turnover rate they are currently experiencing
• Increase professional education and training for community workers and make sure all families have access to qualified professionals to meet the needs of children and adults with disabilities