The View From Toronto: Settlement Services in the Late 1990's

Vancouver Metropolis Conference
January 13-16, 1999

Timothy Owen
Associate Executive Director
COSTI
1710 Dufferin Street
Toronto, Ontario
M6E 3P2
416 658 1600
owen@costi.org

My remarks will focus, for the most part, on issues that have shaped and defined the context within which Toronto based organizations working with immigrants are operating, and the resulting impact on these organizations. Many of the issues are, of course national or provincial, and so the context may be familiar to all. The 1990’s have witnessed a sea change in the political, and therefore, for the most part, financial situation for organizations working in the broader public sector. At both the federal and provincial levels, governments have reduced their involvement in the delivery and support of many social services; hospitals, school boards and community agencies have faced dramatic cuts to their funding, and many valuable programs and services have been lost.

In the past two years, the drop in interest rates, the reduction in or elimination of government deficits, and an active and prosperous private sector have created new opportunities, new funding, and new risks. Three trends which stand out during this time are devolution, increased accountability, and privatization.

First, lets look at what is happening at the three levels of government affecting Toronto:

Federal
The federal government has, for some years, been devolving the responsibility or the administration and delivery of social services to provincial partners. The efforts to devolve power to Ontario have not been concluded, and the resulting delays have led to significant confusion amongst service providers and civil servants alike, and have placed severe limits on any medium or long term program planning efforts. The two most important federal departments with which most community based organizations work are HRDC and CIC, which would be transferring their resources to the Ministry of Education and Training, and the Ministry of Citizenship Culture and Recreation.

These circumstances, while creating an environment of uncertainty, have, in some cases, actually had the effect of increasing resources to the community. The Settlement Renewal initiative, for example, has resulted in an increase of $35million per year to Ontario for the provision of language training and settlement services (from a base of approximately $70million). This increase is seen to be due to the demand from Ontario for a more equal share (on a per capita basis) of the national resources earmarked for settlement services, and as an incentive for the province of Ontario to negotiate an agreement to take over the programs. (Ontario, meanwhile, has been busy devolving its own services, and while interested in getting a fair share from the federal government, has not been seen as actively pursuing an agreement with the federal government on this issue.) Until an agreement is reached for the transfer of the Settlement Programs, the Ontario Region of CIC is administering these additional dollars, with advice from the province.

This new infusion of funds has, since 1997/98, gone almost entirely into the community in the form of enhanced programming, the development of a comprehensive computer infrastructure within the service providing community, research (mainly in the form of needs assessments), and some adjustments to wage and administrative reimbursement rates in grants. Programming initiatives include advanced levels of LINC (levels 4, and over), a settlement and schools partnership program, and an employment program for newcomers in which COSTI and OCASI are partnering to act as community brokers of a program fund through the subcontracting of services to about thirty different agencies throughout Ontario

Similarly, many agencies have increased the amount of business they are doing with HRDC, although it is not clear how much of this increase is due to reductions in programming from other service providers (including the community colleges), and how much is due to net growth in funding available.

The one area where the federal government has retained primary responsibility for the provision of services to newcomers is in the selection and resettlement of refugees. A major overhaul of this system, The Refugee Resettlement Model, is currently underway, and there have been mixed opinions about the standardized funding arrangements being proposed and/or implemented across Canada. Also, and of particular interest in Ontario, since is it recognized that the resettlement of refugees occurs over a longer period of time than that which the federal government is supporting, the role of provincially funded programs to support this federal responsibility will likely become a major issue for federal/provincial discussions around respective responsibility for settlement funding. In Toronto, it has already proven difficult to ensure the provision of appropriate followup services for refugees leaving the Reception Centres, and to determine responsibility for the provision of service to secondary migrants.

The Metropolis Project has created a significant amount of new opportunities for organizations and institutions interested in or working with newcomers to expand their knowledge base, and possibly develop new approaches to delivering services based on qualitative and quantitative research results. CERIS in Toronto has established a governance model in which community partners play an active role. The lasting success of Metropolis will depend upon the interactions that take place among local stakeholders at each local Metropolis site, as well as the way in which each site is able to impact on the development of new policies and practices.

Ontario
The province of Ontario has embarked on a major restructuring of government, which, while similar to that of the federal government in its efforts to reduce deficits, borrows more from Thatcher’s Britain and Reagan’s United States in its efforts to privatize government services and social welfare. Ironically, it’s need to manage this agenda has meant that in many ways it is as much or more of a force in the lives of its citizens, than were previous administrations which were more socially active.

The main affected groups in Ontario have been those whose voices are least able to be heard, which includes those of newcomers. Services to women, victims of abuse, children, people with disabilities, welfare recipients, those in need of subsidized housing and services aimed specifically at disadvantaged individuals or groups were some of the first cut. Funding to groups which advocate for members of these communities, including OCASI, have also been cut back Funding for programs to promote or support employment equity and anti racism have been eliminated. Similar cuts have been made to groups working on environmental issues, arts and culture, and recreation.

In its efforts of devolution, the provincial government has passed on responsibility for many of the services it has cut to the municipal level of government, and, in exchange, has taken over the responsibility of elementary and secondary education.

In an interesting, and still unfolding story, it has also increased to $100 million annually (from $10-12 million), the amount of money it transfers from proceeds of charitable gaming activities to the Trillium Foundation to support community groups providing much of the same services it has cut. While it is an arm’s length agency of the government, it is directed by a government appointed board, and uses similarly appointed local community councils to review funding proposals. This is an enormous new source of funding for community groups, but, as the program is just underway, and as recent controversies suggest, it is too early to assess its potential impact.

Toronto
Municipal governments have taken on an increased role in the delivery of social services, and Toronto has had an impressive track record of responding to equity and access issues within areas of its mandate. There is a strong community resources fund that supports social service agencies, and it has, in recent years paid increasing attention to those agencies serving immigrants. The recent amalgamation of the five cities into one has also amalgamated their individual grants programs, and the next two years will indicate how responsive this combined fund will be to issues facing newcomers. Due to the downloading of housing and welfare programs to municipalities, there has been increased pressure on budgets, but so far, the understanding of the need to have a strong support base for services to immigrants and refugees has been demonstrated through the public statements and development of new funding opportunities for groups serving these communities. The United Way of Greater Toronto has also responded strongly to the increased need to focus attention on the needs of newcomers and their families by increasing resources in this area. Housing issues have attracted particular attention.

It is also important to recognize that within Toronto there is an enormous constellation of organizations (in excess of 100) providing services to newcomers, from very small ethnospecific agencies, recently created to serve the needs of newly formed cultural and or geographic communities, to larger multi ethnic organizations with capacities to provide a wide range of service to the broader immigrant community, and to branches or divisions of large institutions (such as school boards or hospitals) which have been created to cope with the changing demands which a changing community creates. This community of organizations with both complementary and competing interests creates a difficult environment in which to develop an integrated approach to service delivery. While it has been argued that it is better for clients to be able to access one service delivery system, as may be the case in smaller communities, the reality in Toronto is that there are many different communities, each of whom is large or strong enough to justify its own service structure. The challenge is to create effective structures to coordinate the provision of a matrix of services across a matrix of organizations. In response to this challenge, many of the agencies which serve similar client groups have organized umbrella organizations for planning and coordination purposes (e.g. CASSA- Coalition of Agencies Serving South Asians, and Midaynta-serving Somalis) which are themselves are part of larger umbrella groups such as OCASI-Ontario Coalition of Agencies Serving Immigrants). In addition, many program initiatives create or promote ad hoc partnerships among agencies, and between agencies and larger institutions. COSTI itself is part of formal partnerships involving seventy-five different organizations, and almost every organization in Toronto is involved in at least one partnership.

New measures of Accountability
As governments and foundations have reduced and/or focussed funding, they have introduced increased measures of accountability.

Accountability mechanisms for the use of funds in settlement have varied enormously among funders, and have focussed more on monitoring budgets than on measurable outputs of service. Part of this has been due to the difficulty in measuring the impact of many aspects of settlement services on clients, and part has been due to the increased public demand for accountability in government spending. At any rate, as it is easier to count dollars than services, we do a lot of dollar counting.

Recently, there have been increased demands for more frequent and timely financial reporting, and the introduction of a new term into our lexicon: slippage. Agencies are required to justify through regular revised cash flow analyses where lapses in spending are occurring and where they will be spent in future months. If the analysis is not persuasive enough, the grant upon which the agency has been depending will be reduced.

While it is an important exercise for funders to identify possible savings in one project in order to provide support to another possibly underfunded program, the increased financial reporting demands has created serious problems for small agencies with limited human resources to deploy to increasingly sophisticated bookkeeping.

There have also been increased efforts at defining and measuring the impact of the services we provide. The multiple and diverse reporting requirements of funders places a huge administrative burden on community based organizations. For employment services or language training, defining and measuring outcomes has been relatively easy. The difficulty has been to create and maintain a client information system which can record and report different information for every funder and community stakeholders’ need.

For example, in Ontario, HRDC has developed a computerized information system called CONTACT IV, which can be used as a case management system for staff and requires them to report their service statistics to the government. Citizenship and Immigration Canada requires detailed service and demographic information to be reported monthly on their language training program LINC. The Ministry of Education and Training of Ontario government will be requiring the agencies they fund to use their computerized information services to report Job Connect Services. The Ministry of Community and Social Services will also be introducing their own computerized information service and reporting requirements. None of these departments appears to be working with other departments to create a common system.

Since an agency like COSTI receives funding from all these departments and ministries, and also has it own computer information system, the challenge for us, as for many other agencies, is to meet the reporting requirements of all funders and still maintain some integrated agency information system that can count and report on the total number of clients the agency serves, their demographic profile and the service outcomes we achieve, information we require to support our own strategic planning and program evaluation efforts. This has proven to be extremely costly and time consuming, and funders are traditionally adverse to pay for costs like this which are not direct service.

For services such as settlement counselling, information and referral services, it has been difficult to develop appropriate evaluation systems. Many of the NGO’s here will know of or are involved with efforts to develop service standards for settlement. In Ontario, COSTI and OCASI are cooperating on such a project, and here in B.C. a similar effort has been underway for some time. The hope is to evolve these efforts into a national standard. The development of these standards is essential to provide some comparative and transferable service data, and to determine the extent to which a service provider is meeting minimum expectations and is providing effective service to clients. It will, however, involve a commitment by service providers and funders to develop and maintain a common database. Again, this commitment will involve the deployment of human resources away from direct service, or the hiring of specialized personnel, a challenge for all organizations, particularly for those with the least resources.

There have been some efforts in Toronto, including the United Way and the municipal government, to streamline and combine application and reporting processes. This is helpful and important, and needs to be expanded beyond municipal jurisdictions.

Devolution and Privatization
While the devolution of services and funding has provided more opportunities for the non government sector to increase its role and influence in the social service area, it has done so in a way which has altered the traditional role of community based organizations, and affected the balance of funding and the complementary roles of different types of organizations in this sector.

As governments devolve responsibility for social support programs, the process inevitably leads from one level of government to another, and ultimately out of government to the community. The sector with the most experience in delivering these services is the non government sector, and so has the most potential to take over such programs. However, when these programs have objectives which are more consistent with governments’ mandates than those of the community sector, it can affect the ability of agencies to truly be non governmental. In addition, the sector does not have the ability to run annual deficits, and so the process of devolving money losing programs also has the potential to undermine the stability of organizations taking on these services.

Many services previously delivered by government are now contracted out through a competitive bidding process. This has the effect, at least in the short term, of driving down the cost of programs, and of eliminating those service providers who cannot meet the often very strenuous demands of the tendering process. The timeframes are often very short, and there are increasing requirements to prove organizational capacity, and not only the project’s creativity or ability to address a community need.

This process has at least two impacts that are not necessarily intended.

First, by creating short time frames and heavy administrative detail in the RFP, those organizations without excess capacity to divert to the immediate task of writing a proposal, must either hire an outside consultant to prepare their proposal, join a partnership in which they are likely playing a junior role, or decline to participate. This clearly benefits larger, better established agencies, those with excess staff capacity, or those who can divert financial resources to consultants to prepare proposals. Smaller agencies, or those operating with very small financial or human resource surplus, are not able or cannot afford to compete, and therefore become weaker in the process. In the area of settlement services, these are likely to be the very agencies which were established by funding bodies to provide services to emerging communities which the larger more established agencies were seen as not able to provide.

Secondly, by encouraging an environment in which the lowest cost is the desired outcome, particularly in the absence of agreed upon service standards, it can force agencies to either abandon best practices in favour of lowest cost practices, or continue to provide such best practices and operate at a deficit. That is to choose between diminishing quality of service, and going out of business. Again, the effect can be to reward the better established agencies that can withstand short term financial loss, or organizations that do not adhere to best practices.

The move towards privatization has meant that community agencies’ identities have started a shift towards becoming service providing agencies carrying out government contracts, rather than agencies with a prime accountability to the community they represent through their boards and membership. In many cases these identities overlap, but the lines are becoming increasingly fuzzy.

Another impact, which may well be intended, is to broaden the scope of the RFP process, and make funding available to many potential service providers who have not in the past been recipients of funding. Many RFP’s are open to individual consultants, for profit organizations and larger mandated institutions, which now are encouraged to compete with the voluntary not for profit sector. There is significant concern in the community that this trend will further weaken the community based sector, which, in the past was seen to add value to the services it provided by virtue of its rootedness in the community which it served, and not solely because of cost effectiveness.

Conclusions
The last few years in Toronto have been fast paced, and while severe government cuts four years ago changed the landscape of the community based sector, it appears that there is a significant increase in the resources available to the community for providing services. What has changed is the way in which these funds are spent, by which levels of government or arm’s length body, under what conditions, and for what targeted purposes.

Increased competition from new service providers, increased accountability, short time frames, and heavy administrative requirements have put pressure on all agencies, particularly those with the least developed infrastructures. Some of these agencies are at risk of not surviving, and might become better and more effective agencies over time, if efforts were made to assist them in developing their capacities to compete in this new environment. The concept of community based agencies appears to be challenged through the process of privatization and devolution, yet this change has not been openly examined or studied.

While there appears to be many new opportunities available, and additional funds to enable new approaches to service delivery, there should be more attention given to the capacity of organizations to adapt to the changes taking place, to examine the qualities that the various types of organizations bring to the service field, and increased efforts to ensure that not just the strongest survive in this new competitive climate.