Effects of Cutbacks
on Immigrant Service Agencies

Prepared By: Ted Richmond
Commissioned By: City of Toronto Public Health Department
September, 1996

Immigrant Service Agencies or ISA’s are community-based agencies which provide vital integration, social and health services to immigrants and refugees in Metro Toronto and throughout Ontario and across Canada. Their clients are among the most vulnerable sectors of the population, facing multiple forms of discrimination in relation to immigration and refugee status, gender, ethnicity and race. Currently, the funding and therefore the programs of ISA’s are menaced by cutbacks and restructuring of services at all levels of government.

Those involved in planning or delivering health and social services in Metro Toronto need to understand the effects of this process. What is the scope of the cutbacks? What types of services, or agencies, or client groups are most threatened? How are ISA’s responding? And what kind of collaboration is possible to maintain vital services for the clients of these agencies? These are the questions addressed by this action research project.

The information and analysis presented in this paper is based on five in-depth interviews with different types of ISA’s in the City of Toronto and two in another city, and on the documents provided to the researcher by the agencies. Respondents provided valuable information and in many cases revealed a strong degree of consensus on key facts and opinions.

The agencies interviewed are experiencing the cumulative effects of freezes and cutbacks from all their multiple funders over the past three years. Respondents also reported major losses in provincial funding in the past year in the areas of access to social assistance, family counselling, and employment services, and serious concerns about the eventual outcome of current federal restructuring of employment training programs. Informants reported that many community agencies with which they had collaborated had already gone under or were on the brink of closure. The climate of uncertainty in regards to future funding is lowering morale and productivity at the agencies, and limiting the capacity for strategic planning. Most agencies interviewed felt that they had already been "cut to the bone"; however they expected further cuts that will force many smaller- and medium-sized ISA’s to merge with others or to close.

All the agencies interviewed are operating with reduced staff and programming. The respondents had a variety of practices with, and opinions concerning, use of volunteers and subsidized positions as replacements for paid staff. The agencies understood they were expected to survive by building partnerships and seeking new funding sources, but reported a variety of difficulties as well as some limited successes in accomplishing these goals. The agencies interviewed expressed a range of opinions about the degree to which they were willing to modify their basic values in adapting to new circumstances.

An issue of major concern was the process of "Settlement Renewal", which includes both the process of federal withdrawal from responsibility for delivery of settlement services and the structured negotiations with various partners to develop new mechanisms for service delivery. The agencies viewed Settlement Renewal as a major element in the restructuring of immigrant social services, with many of the key outcomes already determined. They also expressed similar concerns about the types of services that might be lost through Settlement Renewal.

All the agencies interviewed were involved in various networking and advocacy activities, but cutbacks have left most of them with much less time to communicate with other service providers and promote the general value of immigrant social services. A climate of crisis and a spirit of competition was seen to be increasingly prevalent among community agencies. The need for stronger advocacy efforts was emphasized by the respondents; some also saw the need for a new model for community-based immigrant services.

The cutbacks to ISA’s are reducing the capacity of health and social service provision in Metro Toronto. Further and dramatic restructuring of the immigrant social services sector will take place over the next year. The situation requires further monitoring and continued investigation. Opportunities for productive communications and collaboration exist in relation to liaison, advocacy efforts, use of electronic networking, and collaboration with the new Metro Toronto research centres on immigration and women’s health.

Each year Immigrant Service Agencies (ISA's) provide a range of essential health and social service agencies to about 450,000 immigrants and refugees in Ontario (320,000 in the Metro Toronto area). Some of their programs receive federal and provincial funding specific to health services, and provincial funding for social services. But much of the (limited) funding for "settlement services" also supports vital health and social services. The work of settlement counsellors, for example, is directly related to prevention in the field of mental health. ISA's also play an essential role, often unpaid and unrecognized, in facilitating access by ethnoracial communities to "mainstream" health and social services.

Initially the main funding for these organizations was from the federal and provincial governments and specifically devoted to immigrant settlement and adaptation, including language training. Over time many of these agencies expanded their funding base and increased their range of activities to include such areas as employment services and skills training, housing services and shelters for abused women, family counselling, mental health services, translation and interpreting services and referrals for other health and social service providers, and community education and citizenship activities. This expansion of services was directly related to the failure of larger institutions or 'mainstream' services to provide access to linguistically- and culturally-appropriate services.

Funding for ISA's in Ontario probably peaked around 1994, at around 70 million dollars. About 35 percent of this funding came from the federal government and about 42 percent from Ontario. The remaining funding was approximately 8 percent municipal, 7 percent United Way, and 8 percent from foundations, fundraising activities and productive enterprises.

With an increased funding base came more specialised activities. This was particularly true in Metro Toronto, which had larger concentrations of immigrant and refugee populations, and (generally) greater municipal funding support. Some agencies developed services as specialised as skills training for refugee women, or shelters for abused women of colour, or medical and counselling services for refugee victims of torture, or family counselling or mental health services for particular ethnoracial communities.

The purpose of the project was to gather more information than was currently available about the effects of cutbacks on immigrant service agencies. the ways that agencies are responding, and the kinds of collaboration that might be useful. Information was gathered from 7 ISA's through structured interviews during the period May through July, 1996. Five of these agencies are located in the City of Toronto and 2 in another city in southern Ontario. The agencies selected for the interviews are representative of the diversity of types of immigrant service agencies in a number of ways. Based on the average annual revenues of ISA's, 4 of these agencies are small, 1 is medium-sized, and 2 are larger. Only 1 of these agencies is 'ethnospecific' in the sense of serving one particular ethnoracial community. Three of these agencies provide specialised services (health, skills training, and education and information resources) while the other 4 are multi-service agencies. The information from the 2 agencies from a smaller city outside of Toronto provided a basis of comparison in trying to understand the specific patterns and effects of the cutbacks in the City of Toronto itself.

The analysis provided in this report was also shaped by the researcher's study of the various documents provided by the respondents (sources cited at end of report).

The information and opinions gathered in this report are derived from the persons interviewed and the documents they supplied; they are not necessarily fully representative of the broad sector of immigrant services in Ontario. To the extent that respondents indicated a strong degree of consensus on certain facts or beliefs as noted in the report, however, it is reasonable to assume that this information represents a least an important part of a complex and rapidly-evolving situation.

Most of the agencies interviewed emphasized the cumulative effect of funding freezes and cutbacks over the past 3 years from the funders that have traditionally supported settlement services: Canadian Heritage, and Citizenship and Immigration Canada (ISAP and LINC) federally, and the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship (OSIP and NLOC) provincially. According to the informants, federal funding from these programs has been cut back about 10 percent per year for several years, while provincial funding was frozen, then cut back for the recent fiscal year. The total effect has been a reduction of about 30 percent in pre-inflation dollars (i.e. greater in real dollars) in "core" funding for immigrant settlement services.

Another major funding loss reported by several agencies is the recent elimination of the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Service's Multicultural Access to Social Assistance Initiative (MASAI) program, which provided support to ISA's in providing clients with access to social assistance and supportive programs to facilitate re-employment. The cancellation of this program led to direct losses in staff and programming, and the abrupt manner that the cancellation took place made financial management and planning even more difficult. In the words of one informant:

We serve many low income immigrants, and now we cannot help them with job search support, employment workshops, and access to social services.

One agency reported that cutbacks in funding for family counselling have had a major impact on services at their agency, and at other family services agencies both "ethno-specific" and otherwise. Cutbacks in funding for outreach and education in combatting wife assault have also reduced programming and staffing for some of the agencies interviewed, or their partner agencies.

Some agencies reported that the most important effect of the cutbacks to date has been in the area of employment services. Many of the provincial programs that were developed or expanded under the previous NDP government have been eliminated (e.g. Transitions (OTAB) and Jobs Ontario), leading to direct losses at the agency level in terms of staff and programs.

Furthermore, federal job training programs are being completely reorganized, and will be linked directly to unemployment insurance funds and the unemployment status of the individual client (i.e. the client must be on UI or have been on UI within the past 3 years to be eligible). Respondents understand that many of the types of employment programs delivered at ISA's, which integrated language training and integration services with skills training, or which supported immigrant women without previous Canadian labour market participation, will no longer exist. At this point in time there are major questions that remain unanswered in relation to the reorganization of employment training programs at both the provincial and the federal levels. Will people on social assistance be eligible for any or all of these programs, and how will this relate to provincial "workfare" programs. And for what kind of language training, if any, will the participants in these programs be eligible?

Another agency interviewed is funded for health services by the federal, provincial and municipal governments. For this agency the main cutbacks in the last two years have come at the municipal level, and have led to reduced staff time and programming. For the other agencies interviewed located in the metropolitan Toronto area, the effects of municipal cutbacks have been minor to date, except where there have been provincial cutbacks in joint provincial-municipal funding arrangements. For the agencies outside of the metropolitan Toronto area that were interviewed, municipal funding has never been a major source of support.

The total dollar effect of the funding cutbacks to date of course varies from agency to agency. One of the larger, multi-service, multi-ethnic agencies in Metro reported losing about 20 percent of total funds in pre-inflation dollars within 2 funding years, and having found enough replacement dollars to reduce the net loss to about 14 percent. One of the smaller agencies outside of Metro reported that they have lost more than 40 percent of their funding in pre-inflation dollars in the past 3 years; and that the programs eliminated by the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services had provided the only "cushion" the agency had ever had.

All the agencies interviewed reported on other social and health service agencies, immigrant-serving and otherwise, that were closing or threatened with closure because of funding cutbacks. In many cases the agency being interviewed had active working relations with these agencies, such as referrals to experienced staff or successful programs that are now lost, or agreements to share rent and administrative expenses for common office facilities that can no longer be maintained. The agencies interviewed also reported on funding cutbacks to the umbrella organizations and coalitions that they rely on to defend their sector against further cutbacks.

Also stressed by all the agencies interviewed was the tremendous hardship imposed by the uncertainty of funding. Major programs which have not been eliminated with little warning are generally under review, and much of the funding for the current fiscal year has not been confirmed, even on paper. Grants that have been approved do not arrive, or do not arrive on time, or are not paid fully. Many staff are working reduced (paid) hours, and are on contract because of the financial uncertainty. In these circumstances staff morale and productivity suffers, and the agency administrators and boards of directors have enormous difficulties in planning.

A general consensus expressed by most of the agencies interviewed was that for all but the largest agencies, programs and staff have already cut back to the limits. The agencies have no financial reserves and no fat to trim in their budgets; they could not cut back on programming and still justify receiving the funding they still receive. In spite of this, the informants expect that there will be further cutbacks, and that the "real crunch" will come in about a year, when many smaller- and medium-sized community-based immigrant service agencies will close.

All the agencies interviewed are operating with reduced staffing and programming. Some of the dismissal of staff and closing of programs has been associated with the elimination of specific provincial programs in the areas of employment and social support services. Apart from this, the informants reported different ways of reducing paid staff hours.

One agency, after discussion among the board members and staff, decided to opt for rotating layoffs for every paid employee including the Executive Director, while trying to coordinate vacations and rotating layoffs with maintaining services and programs and meeting need of clients. Another agency has reduced staff time for everyone including the director leading to reductions in support services, volunteer coordination and administration, and an increase in unpaid staff hours.

Another agency has reduced staff by about one-half, eliminating program directors, program assistants and paid positions for "lead hands" among trainees. At this agency there will be further restructuring in the near future with positions now vacant being eliminated. At another (larger) agency they are restructuring, mainly by cutting administration and management positions, as well as staff in programs that have been eliminated. This latter agency is also holding positions open during maternity leaves, etc.

At another agency "job gapping" has been the main strategy, with the main program positions left open on a rotating basis and during maternity and sick leaves and vacations. This had lead to a reduction in the quality of services, although client user statistics are up.

Increased use of non-paid or subsidized human resources is not necessarily an easy option for the agencies interviewed. Previous studies have revealed that community social service agencies in general, and ISA's in particular, already have a very high ratio of volunteer to paid labour. Furthermore, many of the provincial programs which subsidized training positions within the agencies including summer students are being cut back or eliminated.

One agency reported finding difficulties in using social work students and subsidized training positions because of confidentiality in client services and because people moved on. Another agency reported success in getting grants from universities to subsidize co-op placements.

Concerning volunteer effort, one agency said the amount had stayed about the same. Another said they are being forced to use volunteers "more", but because of staff reductions they can't use them "better". The informant from this latter agency expressed the opinion that people are being misled by talk of "doing more with less" and insisted that "you can only do less with less". Another agency reported that staff reductions forced by cutbacks had led to a reduction in volunteer hours.

An agency providing skills training said that up to now they had not used volunteers (other than volunteer board members), but might start using trainees for functions previously done by paid staff. Another agency said that volunteers can't be used for direct service, but could be used more in group situations.

The agencies interviewed believed that they are expected by funders -- indeed, will be required -- to build partnerships with other agencies, both 'ethnospecific' and 'mainstream'. One agency in fact referred laughingly to the term 'partnership' as "the 'P' word".

One agency reported being in the process of building such a partnership with another agency serving a similar ethnoracial client group, but noted there was no new funding to support this initiative. Sharing of space and administrative functions with other agencies was reported by one informant, who also said that more could be done in this regard.

Some informants reported difficulties in building partnerships. One agency noted that partnerships required sharing money, and felt that some agencies are still not willing to do this. Another agency expressed the opinion that larger agencies were using partnership discussions to gather information to build up their own agency at the expense of others.

All the agencies interviewed are trying to develop alternate funding sources; some of them have been doing this for several years now. One agency cannot pay its rent due to funding cutbacks and is applying to a foundation to cover this expense. Another agency has succeeded in finding project funding for a new initiative, and may have to use this money to subsidize administrative salaries.

One agency has had success in getting new money from foundations, and also has some independent income from productive enterprises. This agency will try to use these monies to maintain what they see as essential components of their services that government funders will no longer support. Another agency has increased its fundraising activities (bingos, raffles etc.) and started two new business ventures which are now at the stage of breaking even. This agency has also had some success in fundraising from foundations, but only to replace part of the services that otherwise would have been lost.

Another agency reported they have had no success in fundraising from corporations or foundations, and that staffing cutbacks have led to a reduction in fees from productive enterprises.

Several agencies reported they are introducing, or expanding the use of, client fees for service. At one agency the immigrant clients were shocked to be asked to pay a small fee for filling out unemployment insurance forms. Other examples of new user fees are being introduced include fees for computer classes, and for "enhanced" versus basic resumes.

The agencies interviewed have different philosophies about the degree to which they are willing to adapt to changing circumstances. One agency noted that one of their essential program activities depends on a provincially-subsidized position which will likely become "workfare", and said they will refuse to comply with this. Two agencies stated that their boards of directors had gone on record as saying the agency would not continue if new funding rules prevent them from carrying out their original mandate. Other informants, however, placed more emphasis of the need for flexibility in a period of major transition. Since all those interviewed agreed that the restructuring being forced on them had to be carried out with a view to protecting services and clients rather than particular agencies, some of these differences in outlook may reflect different assessments of the degree to which the new funding rules will be incompatible with serving the needs of the clients at particular agencies.

The federal government is currently withdrawing from responsibility for the delivery of settlement services. It is also negotiating the outcome of this process with not only the ISA's and their umbrella agencies but also provincial and municipal governments and other institutions such as universities, colleges and school boards, hospitals and other health care providers and planners, and police associations. The process of withdrawal, negotiation and restructuring is termed "Settlement Renewal" and will have a major impact on the future of ISA's.

All the agencies interviewed knew about Settlement Renewal, but some of them did not have much concrete information about the process. Only a few of the informants had been directly involved in the consultations. Those who had been involved in consultations expressed mixed opinions about them. Some informants thought them to be token (in the sense that the most important decisions had already been made); one agency commented on the degree to which the other partners invited to the table were ignorant of settlement issues. Other informants felt that the consultations were valuable, and that the opinions of ISA's and their umbrella agencies like OCASI were being taken seriously.

Almost all the agencies interviewed expressed similar perceptions and concerns concerning Settlement Renewal. The two exceptions were an agency that knew nothing about the process, and another that felt it would change nothing except for funding come from the province rather than the federal government. The remaining agencies had similar views on the following points.

In relation to the outcome of Settlement Renewal, the informants saw the following:

- federal monies for settlement will go the province of Ontario;

- school boards and community health centres will become much more involved in immigrant services;

- many specialised services for immigrants and refugees, and most smaller agencies, will disappear;

- funding will be provided for services to individual clients rather than agencies;

- non-profit agencies will be competing with for-profit institutions for settlement funding;

- the only ISA's that survive will be those that formally ally with bigger agencies and institutions;

- accountability will be much more formal, and likely geared to a case management model based on units of service.

Among the main unanswered questions and fears of the agencies interviewed in relation to Settlement Renewal were the following:

- whether specialised services for refugees will continue to be funded separately and, if so, what form this will take;

- whether funding for immigrant services will be restricted exclusively to recent arrivals;

- who will be eligible for language training;

- whether any employment services will be available for immigrants and refugees other than those currently or recently unemployed (i.e. those without a history in the Canadian labour market);

- whether the province of Ontario will use the transfer of federal monies to eliminate its own funding for settlement services and language training under the pretext of 'eliminating duplication';

- whether any national standards can be maintained for immigrant services without federal control of funding.

Several agencies also commented on the differences between ISA's inside and outside Metro Toronto in relation to Settlement Renewal. One informant (in Metro) thought that agencies outside Metro were more threatened by the process of decentralization implicit in Settlement Renewal, because they have weaker support at the municipal level. Another agency (also in Metro) thought that the current Ontario government would favour non-Metro agencies over the network of specialised immigrant services that has developed in Toronto. Still another agency (outside Metro) thought that the 'multicultural' ISA's, which are common in smaller urban centres in Ontario, were doomed in the current process of restructuring.

Some, but not all, of the Metro Toronto agencies interviewed had received and completed the "1995 Community Agency Survey Metropolitan Toronto". Those who had completed the survey agreed that it had come too soon to capture the scope of cutbacks for their agencies. A few of the informants monitored the activities of the Tracking Impacts Coalition (TIC) online in the conference 'act.cuts.ont'. All the agencies interviewed including those outside Metro Toronto wanted to receive mailings from the TIC. Two agencies wanted to participate in the meetings of the TIC, and a third was willing to help publicize its activities in their newsletter.

All the agencies interviewed were members of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI). Several agencies stressed the importance of OCASI's role in information-sharing and advocacy. Some informants reported that their agencies were less active in OCASI than previously. All of the informants were active in other forms of coalition activities besides OCASI, such as national women's and refugee rights organizations, provincial coalitions of training organizations and health service providers, and municipal or regional networking meetings of community organizations providing health and social services. Four of the agencies interviewed (i.e. more than half) reported that due to the cutbacks and the restructuring of their agencies, they had little time now for networking and advocacy activities.

The informants made a number of comments with similar themes about the general political climate in which they are operating. One theme of these discussions was the extent to which both individual ISA's and various advocacy groups had already been weakened. One informant described other ISA's and community agencies as "broken" and "afraid to speak out". This informant also felt that many ISA's were being passive in the face of the changes taking place, and refusing to take advantage of new opportunities for survival. Another informant said that an anti-racist coalition their agency worked with was no longer very active, and commented that although there were lots of faxes and marches against the cutbacks, the energy was very dissipated. Still another informant also reported that other agencies, and their staff, were afraid to speak out against the cutbacks.

A general sense of crisis in the immigrant services sector was communicated by the persons interviewed. One agency outside Metro felt that all specialised services for immigrants were threatened. Another agency, in Metro, felt that current political dynamics in Ontario particularly threatened Metro ISA's with their specialised services. The following quotes are illustrative of the views of most of the informants:

"Specialised services will disappear; this is obvious."

"What is threatened is the very concept of community organization."

Several respondents emphasized the increased spirit of competition and the growth of a 'survival of the fittest' mentality. They saw ISA's as increasingly forced to compete for ever-dwindling funding sources with each other, with larger health and social service providers, with other sectors (e.g. school boards, community health clinics), and with for-profit private sector providers.

In this context, a number of informants expressed the need for stronger advocacy efforts. One agency is working to develop its own relations with politicians to develop its profile and protect itself against further cuts. Another informant felt that all those effected by the cutbacks needed to develop more collective spirit in resistance and "put on more of a show". Other agencies interviewed stressed the need for umbrella organizations and coalitions to develop a higher profile and stronger bargaining position for the immigrant services providers as a distinct sector. One agency commented that the worth of the services provided had to be communicated much more forcefully, and that "nothing could be taken for granted anymore". This informant also saw the need to develop a "new paradigm" for community-based immigrant services, which would maintain the nature of the services without clinging to out-dated organizational models.

Some of the informants saw positive features in this situation of crisis and transition. One agency saw some potential benefits in the transition to individually-focused training programs. Another informant expressed the opinion that ISA's would now be bargaining with other service providers as equals in a way they never had been able to before. This informant also stressed the vital role of support from clients and board members in their agency's adaptation and survival. For another agency, the elimination of ISA's that do not adapt will get rid of some patterns between agencies and funders that are no longer productive.

The agencies interviewed also reported on some initiatives that are being taken to help ISA's deal with the current situation of cutbacks and crisis. One (Metro) agency noted that support was available from the United Way in relation to information resources, training, consulting services, volunteer lawyers, and productive enterprises.

Several agencies reported being involved in focus groups which will produce a workbook of needed information and relevant models for restructuring. This Citizenship and Immigration Canada funded initiative is being carried out by community-based organizations in collaboration with existing networks.

Another agency is looking at the potential of electronic networking among community agencies (on a pan-Canadian level) in relation to accessing and sharing information resources and cost-effective communications. The questions being investigated include what assistance agencies need to get online, what services or assistance are needed by agencies already online, and what potential exists for income-generating joint ventures in this field. This work is also being done in collaboration with existing umbrella organizations and networks.

Some of the agencies interviewed were aware that there are 'research' issues associated with Settlement Renewal and the restructuring of immigrant services, both generally in relation to models and priorities of service delivery and specifically concerning definitions or standards of evaluation. As concerns changing standards of evaluation, one informant believed that agencies would be obliged to adopt a case management model focusing on service outcomes for individual clients.

Several informants were also aware that new research centres have been established recently in Metro Toronto in relation to immigration issues, and women's health. However at the time of the interviews, the informants had little concrete information on these projects, and no direct links with them.

On the basis of the information gained from this research project, the Department of Public Health should consider the following areas of followup.