Issues & Prospects.
The Funding & Delivery of Immigrant Services in the context of Cutbacks, Devolution & Amalgamation

1. INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the main legislative and policy changes brought about by the Federal and Provincial governments that are impacting the funding of settlement services for new immigrants. Because of the important link between funding and delivery mechanisms, this paper will look at how current policy and legislative changes are affecting the actual immigrant service providers, especially community based organizations (CBOs), which are important players in the overall scheme of delivery. Finally, this paper will make a number of suggestions on possible ways of improving the current system, given that starting next year both the Province and the amalgamated city of Toronto are expected to play a much bigger role in the management, funding and delivery of immigrant settlement services.

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2. BACKGROUND

Recently, the Government of Ontario passed a bill that will, effective January, 1998, amalgamate the six local municipalities into a single-tier municipal government , to be known as the city of Toronto. The city of Toronto is the foremost destination of immigrants to Canada. In all, Toronto receives about 30 and 70 percent of the national and Ontario’s intake of new immigrants respectively. Indeed immigration from outside Canada has for more than a decade been the main contributor to Toronto’s population growth rate of 3.8 percent.

There is a long standing recognition by the existing regional municipality of Metro Toronto and the six local municipalities that the provision of effective settlement, adaptation and integration of services to immigrants and refugees, is imperative if the region is to realize the full benefits of international migration. To date, the responsibility of funding settlement services for new immigrants has mainly been the responsibility of the Federal and Provincial governments, with additional resources coming from municipalities, foundations and other private sources.

However, over the last couple years, both the Federal and Provincial Governments have introduced a number of legislative and policy changes that will have far reaching implications for the funding and delivery of immigrant services. These changes include:

• Cutbacks: In the last few years, all levels of government have undertaken huge cut-backs to social programs as a means to eliminate their debts and deficits. In 1995, the Government of Ontario introduced cuts in welfare and made massive cuts to a whole range of social programs. This has resulted in increased hardship to immigrants and other low income families, as well as to CBOs that provide services to these and other disadvantaged groups. Evidently, cut backs to social programs are one part of an overall government strategy to create a "smaller, more affordable, effective, efficient, and client-centered social service system.. where families and community have a primary responsibility to themselves" (Future Directions in Social Services, Ministry of Community & Social Services, 1996, p2).
  
• Privatization: The other main strategic direction for social services that is impacting on the funding and delivery of immigrant services is privatization. Some of the key elements of the privatization strategy include:

"from demand driven to affordability...
from state responsibility to personal and community responsibility
from full government support to financial contribution
from government regulation/inspection to deregulation/accreditation/self regulation from investment in public sector, to public, private/partnership/competitive marketplace"
(Future Directions in Social Services, Ministry of Community & Social Services, 1996, p2)

The two main forms of the government’s privatization strategy that are affecting the community based organizations in general are:
commercialization which promotes service delivery by commercial providers; and marketization which introduces a competitive market type relationship in the non-profit sector. This has resulted in: 1) narrowly defined purchase of service agreements and time limited contracts, and 2) increased reliance on commercial activities such as charging a fee for services, and selling products to generate additional revenue.

• Federal Devolution: In 1996, the Federal Government announced that it will devolve its responsibility from the direct administration and funding of settlement service to partners at the provincial or local level by April 1998. Although there is no signed agreement yet, it is expected that, in Ontario, the Provincial Government will be handed much more responsibility of managing and funding immigrant services.
  
• Provincial Devolution & Amalgamation: Earlier this year, the Government of Ontario passed legislation that will amalgamate the existing six local municipalities and the Municipal Government of Metropolitan Toronto into a single city of Toronto. Based on recommendations made by the Provincial Government’s "Who Does What? Panel", the city of Toronto will assume significant new funding and management responsibilities in a number of social services that are accessed by immigrants, including: social assistance, child care and public health. In the case of social housing the city of Toronto will be fully responsible for its management and funding. The decision made by the Provincial Government in 1996 to close Ontario Welcome House, its main settlement services delivery agent, is strong evidence that the province may in turn be looking for a ‘local partner’, like the amalgamated city of Toronto, to fully or partially manage the funding and delivery of immigrant settlement services.

All these policy and legislative changes will not only impact on the social sector in general, but also on the way settlement services are funded and delivered in Ontario, and in the amalgamated city of Toronto. There are general concerns about the quality, effectiveness and accountability of a larger city of Toronto bureaucracy taking over responsibility for funding and delivery of settlement services. In recent consultations on the city of Toronto, conducted by Metro Community Services and the Social Planning Council of Metro Toronto, immigrant communities joined other community groups in expressing their concern that "with so many legislative and policy changes emerging ... that moving to change the existing service structures too quickly would result in great instability." (The New City: More than Bricks & Mortar, 1977, p5).

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3. CURRENT FUNDING & DELIVERY OF SETTLEMENT SERVICES

With funding from Federal, Provincial, Municipal and other private sources, a whole range of settlement, adaptation and integration services are provided to immigrants, in order to ensure that they realize their full potential in contributing and becoming full participants in the social, political and economic life of Canadian society.

Many of the settlement, integration and adaptation services to immigrants are delivered through non-profit community based organizations (CBOs). As an important part of the social service infrastructure, CBOs , in collaboration with private and public agencies, deliver a whole range of services to immigrants, including: legal services, language training, reception and settlement services, employment, health, housing, escort and interpretation. These services are critical in helping immigrants overcome a number of barriers to settlement, such as: discrimination and racism, language, non-recognition of previous education and qualifications, and other cultural barriers to adjusting to life systems in Canada.

The involvement of CBOs in the delivery of services reflects a relationship built over the years with government, that resulted in both ethno-specific and mainstream CBOs assuming greater responsibility for designing and delivering services. Meanwhile, government retained the main responsibility for raising and allocating funding. In Ontario and the Toronto area, the main sources of funding for settlement services are the Ontario Settlement and Integration Program (OSIP) and the Federal Government, which has several programs including: Immigrant Settlement & Adaptation Program (ISAP) the Host Program and Language Instruction for Newcomers (LINC). In addition, immigrant services also receive funding from municipalities and a host of foundations.

According to estimates in a study by Ted Richmond, ‘funding for Immigrant Service Agencies or 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 approximately 8 percent from Municipal, 7 percent United Way, and 8 percent from foundations, Fundraising activities and productive enterprise’. (Ted Richmond, Effect of Cutbacks on Immigrant Service Agencies, 1996, p 4)

The exact amount of money that flows directly through Ontario’s non-profits and CBOs to service immigrants is difficult to pin down. However, in 1996, in Ontario, all services provided by the 13 Host programs were contracted to CBOs. A sizable portion of LINC services, 24 percent or 24 million of the total program budget, was also provided through CBOs. Also, the entire ISAP budget worth 8.7 million dollars was allocated to non-profits to support direct settlement and adaptation services. It is evident by looking at the above breakdown of Federal funding that CBOs, and the non-profit sector in general, are a major recipient of government dollars for settlement services.

Despite the fact that most of the funding for settlement services flow through CBOs, legislative and policy changes such as cutbacks, privatization and devolution that have been introduced by both Provincial and Federal governments, are already having a negative impact on the funding and delivery of immigrant services, including: 1) withdrawal by governments from direct service provision as much as possible; 2) reduction or total elimination of grants and other discretionary programs to CBOs, especially to smaller low income and immigrants serving groups that have little political clout; and 3) increased reliance on competitive market type mechanisms for allocating funds to low cost private providers, or to the larger, more mainstream CBOs that can meet the more stringent and narrowly defined requirements of purchase of service agreements. (Mwarigha & Murphy, Merchants of Care?, The Non-Profit Sector in a Competitive Social Services Marketplace, 1997, p3).

A Community Agency Survey of Metropolitan Toronto, 1996, conducted jointly by Metro Community Services, Social Planning Council of Metro Toronto and the City of Toronto, found that 43% of all programs for immigrants or refugees were at a high risk of being eliminated. A recent update of this survey entitled: Profile of a Changing World, 1997, found that net program losses were greatest in services for immigrants and refugees. (p20). The main reason cited for the loss in programs was due to provincial cutbacks. Usha George and Joe Michalski, 1996, found that in total 84.9 percent of 106 agencies surveyed were affected by funding cuts, and as a result had to cut services and reduce the client intake levels.(p 38). One of the main findings of research conducted by Ted Richmond, 1996, is that the total dollar effect of the funding cutbacks to date varies from 20 percent for some of the larger multi-service agencies, to 40 percent for some of the smaller agencies. In addition, many of the smaller CBOs such as ethnospecific immigrant service agencies have had to close. (p.7).

Clearly, the loss of government support through funding cuts, privatization, Federal and Provincial devolution and the uncertainties surrounding the amalgamation of the city of Toronto are all taking their toll on CBOs. In the immediate term, this will result in the loss of important benefits that immigrant serving CBOs contribute, such as: quality service, public accountability, volunteer and community participation in the provision of immigrant, and other social services. In the medium to long term the effects of cutbacks and downloading will weaken the vital partnership that has existed between government and CBOs, to the detriment of a service infrastructure that has made Canada’s settlement services one of the better ones among the G7 countries.

There is a lot more about the devastating impact of recent policy and legislative changes that is well known to those working in the area of settlement services. However, much of this information that is out in the field of service has yet to be documented, and should be through research funded from dollars allocated for sectoral development.

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4. PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE

First and foremost, future funding and delivery structures must take account of the settlement needs of new immigrants. With that in mind, participants to recent consultations on Settlement Renewal, drawn from Toronto’s CBO immigrant service sector, emphasized that settlement dollars should be used for settlement services, and that priority should be directed at those most in need. (Consultations on Settlement Renewal: Finding a New Direction for Newcomer Integration: Round II: Citizenship & Immigration, Canada, 1996, p 8).

In order to get a better sense of how to prioritize service interventions, it is important to reflect on the settlement process of new immigrants. It is generally accepted that most new immigrants go through three main stages in the settlement process - an immediate stage, intermediate, and long-term stage:

• In the immediate stage, newcomers require a range of services, such as:

shelter, food, clothing, information and orientation, and other essential ‘reception’ or early settlement services.

• In the intermediate stage immigrants learn more about how to access and enroll in a number of Canadian systems, starting with language (ESL) classes, upgrading training and education, health, housing and legal systems.
• The long term stage involves diverse and much more differentiated elements that facilitate the long term participation of individual immigrants in Canadian society.

It is important to point out that, conventionally, the time taken to proceed through these three basic stages vary depending on an individual immigrant’s socio-economic circumstances, and his\her cultural and racial proximity to mainstream Canada.

In order to ensure that immigrants receive effective initial assistance, funds dedicated to settlement dollars should be used to provide services in the first two stages of the settlement process - that is, in the immediate and intermediate stages. The priority of the Province’s New Settlement Program’s is to support services that are normally required by newcomers who have been in Canada for less than five years. There is a need to establish if in fact five years sufficiently covers the immediate and intermediate stages of the settlement process. However, the principle of dedicating settlement services primarily to the initial, more crucial, and more difficult stages of the settlement process has merit.

In addition to the promise of delivering better, more direct and appropriately timed services to new immigrants, limiting the use of settlement dollars to the immediate and intermediate settlement stages will also enable easier measurement of outcomes, and better overall accountability of how settlement funds are used. Limiting immigrant settlement services to the two initial settlement stages is also consistent with the preference of most immigrants for effective, empowering and short term settlement services.

Funders should play a leading role in ensuring that settlement dollars are more focused or geared to the initial most important stages of settlement. One suggestion is that the current Newcomer Settlement Program (NSP) should alter its current requirement that an organization use a minimum of 25 percent for direct settlement services (equivalent to the immediate stage services), to a new minimum of at least 45 percent. There should also be a requirement that providers should use at least 40 percent of their settlement funding to provide intermediate stage services. The remaining 25 percent could then be dedicated to supporting other sectoral development initiatives like training and research.

Evidently, to function in a system that is geared primarily to new immigrants settlement needs, as advocated in this paper, will require that many of the agencies and organizations currently delivering immigrant services undergo changes. Already, many CBOs that deliver settlement services are in different stages of renewal and reorganization. Some of the changes that are taking place are chronicled in a report produced collaboratively by a number of CBOs entitled: Making the Road by Walking It, 1996, under the auspices of CultureLink.

This hands-on study looks at the effect of cutbacks and restructuring on immigrant settlement service agencies, as well as the response of several CBOs to the threat of closure and possible end of services to their immigrant clients. Some of the strategies, options and examples of change undertaken by immigrant serving CBOs in Toronto include:

1. cooperative strategies between related services that have to date operated as single entities,
2. internal reorganization and re-focusing on core mission and activities of serving newcomers,
3. coordination, using volunteers more effectively and sharing office space to reduce overhead costs, and
4. starting new ventures in order to generate additional revenue for services

The study concludes by stating that the key to success is for CBOs to become learning organizations, moved by creativity rather than problem solving, and that see their world in "wholes" rather than in parts. Hopefully, the recent willingness and efforts by CBOs to cooperate cross sectorally will culminate in real outcomes in the creation of a better coordinated and integrated, and resource efficient system of settlement services.

Another critical determinant of the future prospects for settlement services is the final agreement between the Federal Government and the Province. This agreement, once it is completed will shed more light on exactly which authority will be responsible for funding and delivery of settlement services. Regardless of whether settlement services will in the near future be managed and funded by the Province, or funded and delivered by the city of Toronto, the new system that is put in place should reflect a number of fundamental principles and elements. These principles and elements emerged through several recent consultations with community and institutional stakeholders. These principles and key elements include:

1. that any new settlement system should build on the strengths of the existing system that includes mainstream and ethno-specific CBOs, private and public institutions
2. that funding decisions should be based on the principles of access and equity for all immigrant groups
3. that prior to implementing a new immigrant settlement program, the Province or which ever level of government or institution that is charged with doing so, should consult with all current service providers in respect to planning and delivery of programs
4. that if the city of Toronto is the preferred level of decision making in respect to funding and delivery options, then adequate funding and capacity to manage settlement programs have to be ensured. This is a very important requirement given that, conceivably, the city could end up taking over responsibility for an additional $50 million. This amount represents the approximate combined share of current Provincial and Federal funding for settlement services within the current boundaries of the city of Toronto.
   

5. CONCLUSION

To conclude, this paper has highlighted a number of changes that are impacting on the funding and delivery of immigrant settlement services, in the context of Federal devolution of settlement services, and the impending amalgamation of the city of Toronto. In conclusion, this paper has suggested:

• an end to cutbacks and a renewal of the traditional partnership between government, community based organizations, public institutions and agencies in the delivery of immigrant settlement services.
• an improved and adequately funded service delivery system, one that is based primarily on the settlement needs of immigrants. To that end, the idea of providing services to new immigrants in the immediate and intermediate stages of the settlement process is a reasonable one. In, these two initial stages, services should be provided to meet traditional reception needs, and then to provide the range of knowledge and information needed by immigrants to access various Canadian systems, including: training and educational institutions, employment agencies, social and health services. Using settlement dollars to primarily fund the initial settlement stages is consistent with the principle of empowerment, and limits the retention of immigrants as long term clients in settlement services.
• that CBOs to adapt and change to the new world, in order to ensure that they continue to provide quality services to new unmigrants. To that end, service providers need to reexamine the way they deliver services, and adopt team and across organizational approaches. This general exercise of restructuring needs to integrate the strengths of the current diverse service delivery infrastructure, made up of: large sized institutions, small and medium sized mainstream agencies and multi-ethnic and ethnospecific organizations.

Finally, if and when the new funding system is put in place, it must provide adequate financial resources and capacity to ensure that the city of Toronto’s is able to meet its disproportionately high demand for settlement services. This is important in order to avoid placing additional pressure on the finances and existing municipal services of the city of Toronto, especially given the extra burden already imposed on its residents as result of cutbacks, privatization, devolution or downloading, and the anxiety of living in a future amalgamated megacity of Toronto.

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References:

1. Amy G., Inkster K., Lee P., Stewart M., 1996, Making the Road by Walking it, CultureLink,Toronto.
2. George U. and Michalski J., 1996, A Snapshot of Service Delivery in Organizations Serving Immigrants, Centre For Applied Social Research, University of Toronto, Toronto.
3. Mwarigha M.S. & Murphy C.,1997, Merchants of Care ?, The Non-Profit Sector in a Competitive Social Services MarketPlace, Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto, Toronto.
4. Richmond Ted, 1996, Effects of Cutback on Immigrant Service Agencies, City of Toronto - Public Health Department, Toronto.
5. 1995, Community Agency Survey, Metropolitan Toronto, Metro Community Services, Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto, City of Toronto, Planning and Development, Toronto.
6. 1996, Ministry of Municipal Affairs & Housing, The Who Does What Panel Report, Government of Ontario, Toronto.
7. 1996, Federal Settlement Renewal Initiative: Phase Two of consultations: Commissioner of Community Services, Metro Community Services, Toronto.
8. 1996, Consultation on Settlement Renewal: Funding a New Direction for Newcomer Integration: Round II: Citizenship & Immigration, Canada,
9. 1996, Ministry of Community & Social Services, Future Directions in Social Services, Government of Ontario, Toronto.
10. 10. 1997, Profile of a Changing World, Social Planning Council, City of Toronto, and Metro Community Services, Toronto.
11. 11. 1997, Newcomer Settlement Program, Funding Guidelines- 1997- 1998, Ministry of Citizenship, Culture & Recreation, Toronto.

Mwarigha M.S. is an immigrant from Africa who has been actively involved over  the past years in the community development and immigrant service areas in  Toronto. He is currently employed with the Community Social Planning Council of  Toronto (SPC) and the Centre for Equality Rights in Accomodation (CERA).  Mwarigha M.S. has been actively involved with CERIS since its inception and for the first two years served as a community representative on the CERIS Management Board. He is the author of a number of articles and studies dealing with the planning and provision of social services and is a frequent public speaker on these issues.

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