Proceedings of the Subcommittee on Population Health
Issue 6 - Evidence, May 20, 2008 - Afternoon
ST. JOHN'S, Tuesday, May 20, 2008
The Subcommittee on Population Health of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met this day at 1:05 p.m. to examine and report on the impact of the multiple factors and conditions that contribute to the health of Canada's population — known collectively as the social determinants of health.
Senator Wilbert J. Keon (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable minister, senators, ladies and gentleman, we are delighted to resume our hearing and delighted to have the minister, The Honourable Shawn Skinner before us who is the Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment.
Shawn Skinner, Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador: Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I do have a couple of staff members with me; Aisling Gogan and Lynn Vivian-Book and when I finish my opening remarks, I will pass it to Aisling for a presentation that she will do on behalf of our government.
Let me first say a hearty welcome to each one of you. It is nice to have you in our province and hope that you have been enjoying the great weather we have been having. I did hear one person tell me they found it a bit cold, but we thought it was kind of balmy actually. I am not sure what part of the country it came from, but it does not get much warmer than this, but anyway, welcome to each and every one of you. I am glad that you could hold some hearings here in our province.
My intention today is just to have a few remarks. I do not have any prepared presentation, but I do have some notes that I will refer to and just talk a little bit about our Poverty Reduction Strategy in general and how that relates to population health. Then, as I said, I will turn it over to Aisling who will do a more formal presentation to you.
On behalf of Premier Williams and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, I am very pleased to be here to speak to you and we are very pleased that the Senate has seen it fit to take such a strong interest in poverty. It is something that has captured our attention as a government for the last four years or so and we are glad to see that, from the Senate's perspective, you also have an interest in this issue and poverty, basically, we believe has some significant impacts on general population health. We are glad to see that your committee is having a look at this. I think that the fact that you are travelling throughout the country is going to have a couple of benefits to the work that you are doing. One is just general awareness building. The fact that you are here and the fact that the media will be covering this and that other people in the province are aware that you are here, I think is important. Awareness about people's income levels and their ability to have total social inclusion is very important. I think you will build some awareness about that. I also feel that you will help us build some momentum in terms of tackling some of the underlying social problems that we have. They are complex ones in terms of trying to address poverty and population health.
It is always nice for us when we get an opportunity to talk about the work that we have been doing because it helps fill our sails again with fresh wind and allows us to move forward with the challenges that we have here in this province. Again, thank you for that and thank you for coming to the province.
Without boring you with all the details, I am sure you are aware that a large body of evidence shows that poverty has more impact on health than any other single factor that a person will experience. Your study on population health has lead you to look at poverty. Through our Poverty Reduction Strategy, we determined that if we were going to have a healthy and a productive population here in Newfoundland and Labrador, we had to make sure that we were doing something to address this province's poverty situation.
Our approach to tackling poverty is very much a population health approach and it considers a broad definition of poverty, which goes beyond a person's income. We had some discussions early on about how do we define poverty and we very quickly got over that. We spent a lot of time talking about it and not too much time doing much about it. So, we are leaving the definitions to other people to determine. We are putting in place programs, policies, regulations and services that we feel will address poverty.
Our definition of poverty is a broad definition and it does not just include a person's income. It has to do with social inclusion as well as income and we will talk more about that a bit later.
I know that you have had a presentation from our Community Accounts people. Our work on poverty reduction is influenced by the work that our Community Accounts people have been doing. It has allowed us to take an evidence- based approach. That has been very, very important to us and we are still doing a lot of work with Alton Hollett and his people in terms of trying to determine measuring tools, measurements that we will use on a go-forward basis that will allow us to determine our level of success. We will continue to use Community Accounts as a tool that will allow us to continue to add components such as the Newfoundland and Labrador Market Basket Measure, MBM, which will allow us to determine if we have been successful at the community level.
We are in the second year of our strategy. When we began the strategy, we committed to consultations with the communities in the second year. The strategy is a 10-year program and after two years, we wanted to go back and talk to our citizens. Besides the consultative piece, the other piece is the measuring piece and that is why we have been so involved with the Community Accounts people trying to determine how we were going to measure our progress. Many of the national measurement tools do not fly here locally and I would suggest to you that is true of any province, not just the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The national tools, while they have a purpose and they allow some broad based comparisons year over year, they do not reflect the reality of our geography, of our population, of many other things. We need local tools and that is where Community Accounts comes into it. We believe we will have better success using precise measurements using local tools as opposed to national tools.
We believe our future prosperity depends on a healthy population. We also believe that a healthy population is one in which all people have an opportunity to contribute. Therefore, social inclusion is very much a part of what we are talking about and through our Poverty Reduction Strategy, we look at bringing in some of the programs, initiatives, and policies that we brought in under poverty reduction. We have always looked at them concerning social inclusion as well. It is important that people have the ability to participate, make a contribution and realize their full potential. We believe our poverty reduction initiatives have to include those things as well. It is not just income or money; it is about participation, inclusion and reaching your full potential.
Our Poverty Reduction Strategy has three main points: the alleviation, reduction, and prevention of poverty. Any of the initiatives that we employ fall into one of these three categories.
We make long-term commitments in our initiatives and we always look to a comprehensive approach. The initiatives that we started two years ago are ongoing, but we have been building on them. We started out with a budget amount in 2006 and we added to that in 2007. We built upon the 2006 initiatives and in Budget 2008, more new initiatives have increased our budget commitment to about 100 million dollars per annum. They are initiatives that we keep adding to, we keep building on. It is not something that you do in one budget year and then you forget about it in the next budget year. We are very strategic in terms of the initiatives that we bring in, and they are brought in with the understanding that they will be carried forward for years to come. We will make a long term commitment to support those initiatives.
Our government believes that we must tackle poverty. We realized that many of our citizens were vulnerable and did not have the necessary support to participate fully in society. Therefore, we made poverty reduction a priority. Again, I go back to the social inclusion piece and I go back to the fact there are vulnerable people out there. These people can look after themselves if given the proper opportunities and supports.
We believe that to have a truly good society, we have to make sure that we have the necessary supports for people who are vulnerable. They have to be able to participate. The premier referred to it as the rising tide lifting all boats, and that is our approach. We are in a situation where times are good and are going to become better, and we believe that everyone should benefit by that. So, the rising tide, as the tide comes in, as the money is coming in, the economic opportunities are growing here in this province, that water that lifts all the boats, that economic growth should lift everyone as well, and people should not be excluded or left behind. Everyone should have the opportunity to make sure that he or she gets his or her piece of that pie and benefits from that economic growth.
The Poverty Reduction Strategy is a starting point for us. In 2006, we made a 10-year commitment to go from the province with the highest level of poverty in Canada to the province with the lowest level of poverty. Some people have asked if we will be able to eliminate poverty; I am always cautious about that, and to be frank with you, I do not think we will ever eliminate poverty. I think there will always be people who will suffer for all kinds of reasons. I think we will have situations where people will they find themselves in poverty or will find themselves in situations where they are not able to participate fully, and that is why we have governments, that is why we have social programs, that is why we have people who help other people.
Our goal is to transform ourselves from the province with the highest levels of poverty, to the province with the lowest levels of poverty in a 10-year time frame, and we are about two years into that now. We have had some successes. We believe we are making some progress, but this year will be a pivotal year for us because of the consultation we will do back with our community groups to see how they think we are faring, and also because of the measurement tools that we are going to be using to establish some baselines to see the progress that we have been making.
Again in terms of being able to see initiatives like this work, it takes leadership, it takes commitment, and I make no bones about it. Premier Williams identified poverty as something that the government had to do something about. He put poverty on our government's agenda. He highlighted it and said it is something we need to deal with. We, as his cabinet ministers and caucus colleagues, and the officials who work with us in our department, have made it a priority. That is what it takes. It takes leadership and commitment. You have to be committed and you have to be committed from the top of the chart right down to the lowest person on the chart to make sure that everyone knows where you are going and what you are doing.
I talked about the fact that we have $100 million invested in our Poverty Reduction Strategy. For some of you maybe from bigger provinces, that may not be a lot of money. I can tell you here in Newfoundland and Labrador it is a sizeable chunk of money. It is a tremendous financial commitment and it is a commitment we have made within government where we have an interdepartmental committee, a ministerial committee. In everything we do, we talk about alleviating, reducing, and preventing poverty.
This is a significant level of investment for us as a province, but again I want to stress to you it is one piece. We have a multi-faceted approach to our social development, as well as our economic development, and I believe the two go hand in hand. Social development and economic development are not two roads that never diverge or converge on each other. They are two roads that need to intersect. In terms of our social development, when we talk about that, we also talk at the same time about our economic development in terms of the investments we have made in capacity building in this province, building our educational institutions, building our health care institutions, building our infrastructure, and doing things in our rural economies. We want to make sure that we are strengthening our economic base because by strengthening our economic base, we will also strengthen our social base, and that is where our Poverty Reduction Strategy comes from. It is not just the social side that we are worrying about, and that we are doing something about; it also is the economic side because we believe that both go hand in hand.
The best poverty prevention tool that we can have is giving citizens meaningful and well-paid jobs. That is what people want. They want to be able to look after themselves and make their own contributions in society, and one of the best ways to do that is to make sure that we have economic opportunity here in this province for people to be able to take advantage of that.
As a government, we believe it makes absolute social sense and economic sense for us to encourage conditions that include rather than exclude people. Those capacity-building items such as education and health care are important to what it is we are trying to do on our social agenda. I believe a bit later this afternoon you will have people in from the Department of Health to talk about our wellness strategy and that fits into the Poverty Reduction Strategy and fits into the multi-faceted approach.
We are committed as a government to the kinds of strategic decisions that we have been making and all of them tie together to the ultimate goal of making us a better province in terms of our economic and social status.
I will leave you with the message that during meetings with various other colleagues and provincial ministers of labour, housing and social services, we are all doing something individually to try to eliminate poverty in our own provinces. I think a national approach to poverty would enhance our individual efforts. I think it is something that has to get on the federal agenda. It is something that the federal government can lead by example. It is something that we can all then pool our resources to try to do something about it.
I leave it to better minds than mine to figure out how that needs to work. I can certainly have some thoughts on it. I encourage our federal government, I encourage every province, and territory in the country to work together to eliminate poverty in our country because I think then it will be better for all of us.
Aisling Gogan, Director, Poverty Reduction Strategy, Department of Human Resources, Labour and Development, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador: Thank you and I am going to try to keep my comments brief because I know you want the opportunity to ask questions. When we received our invitation, it indicated that you were interested in knowing more about how we are coordinating a whole of government approach. I thought I would just follow Minister Skinner's introductory remarks with some details from that particular perspective.
Specifically, I will outline the mechanisms and processes that we are using to ensure that we have a comprehensive and government wide approach. When we look at the experience of other countries and the experiences that we had have here in Canada, all the evidence points to what we need. We need a comprehensive approach in order to be able to tackle the complex problem like poverty and social exclusion. As Minister Skinner referenced, when we talk about poverty we are really talking about population health through the social determinants of health. We include social inclusion in the definition. Unlike the terms "population health" and "social determinants of health," I think everyone relates to the term "poverty." The other thing that happens within a public service is if you have a term like "population health" or "social determinants of health," everyone says, oh, well that is the responsibility of the Department of Health and Community Services. One of the advantages of talking about poverty is it is clear that it is no one department's responsibility. It helps take you to the place where you realize you do need a comprehensive approach to tackle the problem.
The focus that we have been directed to take is one that is on prevention and early intervention to break the cycle. We have talked a lot about the intergenerational nature of poverty and looking at reducing and alleviating the negative effects of poverty. Mr. Skinner referred to that.
In terms of the success of the initiatives and in the overall approach, the key has been the level of leadership that has been given to this issue. Minister Skinner referred to the premier's commitment and the ministerial committee to oversee the strategy. Nine ministers make up that committee. Over half of our provincial cabinet is overseeing the Poverty Reduction Strategy. Ministers from Aboriginal Affairs, Education, Finance, Health and Community Services, Finance, Justice, Labrador Affairs, Innovation Trade and Rural Development, and the Minister responsible for the Volunteer and Non-Profit Sector are members of that group. I think one of the things that is really important is that in addition to this sort of social departments that you would expect, you would also notice on that list was the Department of Finance and the Department of Innovation, Trade and Rural Development. It has been really important, in terms of thinking about this comprehensively, to have that level of leadership from across government. Any of you who have every worked in public service or been involved probably know that it is very difficult to work horizontally in government. We are situated in departments which are vertical structures and we traditionally work in our silos. If we did not have that level of leadership and we were not challenged to work this way, I do not think we would be successful.
There is also a ministerial committee and a deputy minister's committee, which mirrors the same representation as the minister's committee with related agencies such as our Women's Policy Office, our Rural Secretariat, the Housing Corporation, et cetera. These committees are critical in terms of leadership as well at the departmental level; the deputies challenge their departments to work this way. We are also lucky in terms of our public service that there is a recognition that has been building over a long time, but if we really want to make a difference in these areas, we need to work together across departments.
When we think of poverty, there are things that we can do in the Department of Human Resources, Labour and Employment. There are things the Department of Finance can bring in like income tax reduction, but unless we are all working together we are not going to have the impact that we need to have on people living in poverty.
We also have a working group that includes director-level representation. When we meet, we try not to consider that we are there to represent our departmental mandates, but rather we always take as the starting point, the perspective of people living in or vulnerable to poverty. That has been really important. I think maybe it is kind of hard sometimes to explain, but normally, when we all go to meetings, we are there, I am there from Human Resources, Labour and Employment, someone else is there from Health and Community Service and we are all trying to think about what our little piece of the pie is and what we bring to that and that makes you miss the bigger picture. Working this way has allowed us to consider the bigger picture. We look at the issues through the lens of the person living in poverty.
The other key element is that the Poverty Reduction Strategy division has poverty reduction as its primary responsibility. In terms of thinking at the national level how this might work federally, it is important and it is someone's primary responsibility within the public service to be focused on this sort of complex initiative to keep the momentum going.
In terms of the way that we work and the key elements of our general process, we have been reviewing all of our existing programs and services. We have been analysing the combined impacts of programs and services, both existing and new. That is a really complicated task when you think about things like marginal effect of tax rates and the way all the provincial and federal programs merge together and what they mean for people. We have been undertaking research and we are looking at how to we can measure our progress while getting a handle on who is living in poverty and why. We have also been consulting with the community. We have an ongoing dialogue. We have a good relationship with a wide variety of community partners. As Minister Skinner referenced, this year we are going back out more broadly to try to talk to as many people as we can about how we are doing and what we need to be doing in the future. It is important that this work be undertaken not from one department's mandate because I think the response would be very different. I cannot emphasize also the importance of our connection to community partners.
Lynn Vivian-Book, Assistant Deputy Minister, Income Employment and Youth Services, Department of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador: Good afternoon, I just want to highlight one other area that is very significant in terms of taking a comprehensive and integrated approach to poverty through, whether you call it horizontal or whole of government approaches. Another essential piece is the linkages to other strategies or other major initiatives. For our government there are several and they are all at varying stages of development. They all have slightly different structures in terms of approach, but some of those include the wellness strategy, which you are going to hear about in a little while. Included are the healthy aging and senior's strategy; violence prevention strategy; the mental health and addictions framework; sport and recreation strategy and the energy plan. We have annual Aboriginal women's conferences that feed into the agenda and a northern strategic plan. So, there are many, all of which have elements that support and we can be supportive of through the poverty initiative. Some of the ways that we do that is through some joint representation on committees. We are putting a focus on strengthening the joint representations, as we believe we will find some common indicators. We believe there is something to learn from other strategies that we can build on using the Community Accounts as the basis for many of those areas. We have also moving toward more than just shared planning, but shared work across these initiatives. These will grow and build as we go along. It is essential that we maximize that integration and I think there is still some work to do in that area, but I think we have come a long way. Our provincial departments are accustomed to working together and I think we have been able to move that along. Aisling referenced the point that having the focus on poverty is an advantage because not one department owns poverty and coming to the table was an easier piece for other departments to do. That is both a benefit and a challenge. It is certainly a challenge at the federal-provincial level because there is not one table to bring agendas forward or areas forward. There is not one area, but that does not mean that you should not go there, but it does provide some additional challenges.
Although we are talking about poverty today, it is certainly essential for us and we are continuing to move along that path of working to maximize the work across the strategies that we have in government. I believe that you cannot tackle everything all at the same time and building on the different strategies and bringing them forward as an integrated approach, I think will serve us well from a lessons learned and from experience in horizontal and vertical policy development.
The Chair: Thank you all very much. The minister already told us we obviously came here to study Community Accounts and whole of government approach and he was absolutely right.
I would like to address how you are using the incredible information that is available at the community level through Community Accounts. In my opinion, it is the best information available in the country. I would like to discuss how you are using this to organize communities because real change occurs at the community level. You need everything; you need federal, provincial, municipal interventions, but I think real change occurs at the community level where people understand each other, where people understand what has to be done. I think that from a point of view of correction of health disparities in various communities, you need organization at the community level. How can you use this wealth of information to organize communities?
Ms. Gogan: The Community Accounts are a powerful tool because they share information with communities, with community-based groups, and with individuals who can look and learn about their communities or have evidence to support what they already know about their communities in many cases. So, the government has promoted the use of Community Accounts and as you probably heard this morning, there is regular training for community based groups and just for individuals in the community on how to use Community Accounts. When we use information it means that communities can go and they can have access to the same information as well. It adds to our transparency and our accountability because there is also information in Community Accounts that we might not highlight. Other communities might bring that information forward to us and say look, in our community, we have a higher use of income support or we have, depending on the piece of information. We have also been looking to add to Community Accounts a growing, evolving tool. For example, community safety information was added fairly recently and soon, we are going to add the Newfoundland and Labrador Market Basket Measure. That measure will allow people to look at ways of getting at poverty or low-income right down at the community level. They will be able to identify the problem and focus on single parents or older single adults et cetera. That helps in terms of the dialogue with government. I think the main thing is that the information is out there to be used by the Community Accounts and it allows us to talk at a different level. When we did our consultations in 2005 we had a background report that had some statistics about how we saw the problem and then community groups were able to use that and use Community Accounts when we went out to talk to them about their own communities. We encouraged that dialogue. Similarly, we are in the process of developing a short background document that will help shape our next round of consultations. It makes room for a discussion at a different level and it allows community players to feel more confident about coming to the table with evidence for what they are saying.
The Chair: Mr. Minister, I am looking at the map of Newfoundland and Labrador and I see the problem areas, which you have marked with red dots. Do you have organizations in place in those trouble spots that can speak directly to the citizens in those areas? I am absolutely convinced that change occurs on the ground. However, I am not sure that any of us truly understands the meaning of a community. I am not sure that we know how big or small a community should be and whether they should just come out of the woodwork by serendipity, the way most of them have. I do not know whether they should have a civic attachment or they should have a postal code attachment, et cetera.
Have you progressed far enough in your endeavours that you can sit in your office, look at the red dots and say, oh yes, this is what I am going to do, and this is where I will intervene? You are on your own because you do not really have many examples to draw from across the country.
Mr. Skinner: When I look at the red dots, I feel we are moving forward although I do not have a lot of personal experience outside the department to draw upon. I can only anecdotally, I guess, share with you that I believe we have tremendous capacity in our communities that are quite willing to assist us in making our communities and our province a better place in which to live. This is not something that we need to go and thrust upon people. They are actually waiting for it; they are down there waiting for us to bring the resources of government to the table to assist them in what it is they are trying to do. In many ways, I believe we are very complimentary in terms of what it is we are trying to achieve. My experience is that depending on the issue or the policy decisions that you are trying to develop, there are leaders in the community who will step forward. These leaders are recognized as leaders in that particular area and the communities let them represent them in these issues.
It is not difficult most times to find the people you need to talk to help move the agenda forward. As Aisling has said the beauty of Community Accounts is that the information is there for everyone to see; there are no surprises. In addition, if we try to do anything through the back door that we could not do through the front door people will know that anyway because they see the same information. So, the level of accountability is very high. Besides that level of accountability, the localized nature of the information and Community Accounts helps to bring out the uniqueness of some of the areas that we talk about, so that a solution that happens here on the map may not happen half a mile away because it is a bit different from that particular community. Because of our geographic mass, you can go from community A to community B that may be very close to each other, but be different in terms of the kinds of challenges and the kinds of responses they need to those challenges. I believe we have a very strong community base, lots of capacity very willing to assist and very much looking for our assistance and the resources we can bring forward. I always feel like we are working in partnership with the individuals in our community. Sometimes we have differences of opinion, but for the most part, we have been able to keep moving the agenda forward because we all are dealing from the same set of circumstances and we all know the reality. It is not a government picture or an organization's picture; it is the picture. It is real and because people respect that information and understand that information, you are able to deal with that and just move forward from there.
Senator Cochrane: Minister Skinner, we thank you for being here today and for the leadership that you have shown in your portfolio in promoting poverty reduction in the province.
Earlier today, we looked specifically at the Community Accounts system. We had three individuals here and I was very proud to see that we have such a system in place. I am proud of the people who have initiated this system and being from Newfoundland I am proud, I must tell you. I am impressed with its value as a tool to support an evidence- based approach. We need a tool to support evidence and they showed us that they have such a tool.
Ms. Vivian-Book, you mentioned initiatives that are linked to the Poverty Reduction Strategy including healthy aging and the wellness strategy and I cannot help but wonder what impact Community Accounts had on the development of these initiatives.
Ms. Vivian-Book: From the perspective of wellness and the seniors in aging I think it is growing in its linkages. I think initially the data that was looked at were health status indicators and many of the traditional indicators. Now, adding that information around income, education, all of the areas that we can from Community Accounts, it was not necessarily the trigger that started the initiatives, but it is certainly being imbedded in them now. As the different choices are being made about initiatives and approaches and the community approach, that information is being used. I cannot say that the trigger was the Community Accounts. However, they are being used and will continue to be used as more information is added. It was not the trigger that established either of the two.
Senator Cochrane: What did you use at the trigger?
Ms. Vivian-Book: The triggers for wellness, and I was in the Department of Health and Community Services at the time with responsibility for this area, were certainly the health status indicators, indicators of lifestyle in terms of smoking behaviours, health behaviours, and high incidences of chronic disease. Other triggers included recognizing that in order to impact heart health and we had a lot of experience in the Heart Health Program and approaches, and looking at approaches like community kitchens. We took a very broad approach to these, but at the same time the development of the Community Accounts was coming along in tandem. Therefore, there were linkages and the important linkages at that point were to make sure the Community Account goes broader than population and traditional indicators, making sure it imbeds the indicators that can be utilized in planning for strategies that are more complex. As I mentioned, we have strategies across government that are in varying stages of development and I think our job is to make sure that they work in tandem as much as they can and benefit from the work of the Community Accounts. I think Community Accounts is better for having the conversation from other strategies and we are better from having the Community Accounts.
Senator Cochrane: I believe the Community Accounts program started in 1998 and the objective was to identify community strengths and needs to provide a picture of the social landscape in ones own background and beyond. It reflects government's commitment to use evidence based decision making techniques which shall also serve as a tool for progress. Is that what your department is doing, minister? It started out that way, are we continuing on that way? Are we using that platform for current government initiatives?
Mr. Skinner: I think the short answer, senator, is yes, we are doing that, but I think we are also starting to realize the vast amount of information that is contained in Community Accounts. I do not think we realized just how much information we had and how much we could get from it. Now, as we start to use it more, every time you use it, you realize, my goodness, I could be doing something else and there is other information here that can inform other opinions. It is a bit of a treasure chest of information that every time we open it and start to use it we find something new that helps us.
To answer your question, I would say yes, we are still using it in that intended purpose. However, I think it has potential that we have not even realized yet to help inform government policy on a go-forward basis. Until we work with it more, I do not think we will realize that potential. I think we have not used it nearly to the capacity that it can be used to help us in informing government policy. I mean "us" as government as well as our community partners. I think they, as well, do not realize the potential that is there in terms of some are using it a lot and have good handle on it; some are only just scratching the surface yet, but I think there is still more to be done.
Senator Cochrane: Who do you mean by "some"?
Mr. Skinner: Some of the community groups know of and use the Community Accounts system extensively to help them in the work they do relative to their interactions with government. Some of those community based groups and community leaders are only now starting to use the Community Account systems to help them in terms of the work that they are doing. They are fairly new to it and have not realized the potential that exists with the information in Community Accounts.
Senator Cochrane: When they use this program, and they find out exactly where the problem is, do they come to you then when it comes to developing a program, and is this a joint venture?
Mr. Skinner: I do not want to refer to the information in Community Accounts as people identifying problems because I think it is more a matter of looking at the information and recognizing what and why we feel it needs to be changed. It may not necessarily be problems that have been identified, but challenges that are in the community that need to be addressed.
The Canadian Mental Health Association recently approached me on some challenges that they were finding within their own organization relative to mental health and housing. It linked poverty, economic opportunity, consumption of mental health services, and housing all together and proposed some solutions to me. Because I am Minister for Housing, proposed some solutions that they felt may be able to address what they saw as being something lacking in the community. We had some discussions and through various budget initiatives, we have tried to respond. That is an example of how that particular group came forward to us.
I am sure Aisling can explain how she would use it from a government perspective to try and lead initiatives that would come forward from government.
Ms. Gogan: I am coming to the session tomorrow morning as well, so I know I will have more opportunity to talk then about as a user of Community Accounts.
Certainly, if we were looking, for example, across the province at income support use or just families living below a certain income level to see the geographic differences, or if we were looking at programs specifically targeted at single parents, we can use Community Accounts to look at where there are larger populations if we wanted to have a program. Some have a group dynamic where they are mainly single mothers, and they find it really useful to get together as a group because they can support each other and we have had great success with our employment transitions in some of those programs.
We can use Community Accounts as well as our own administrative data to look at where it makes sense to offer a program like that versus where we might have to develop a different model if there is not a kind of group that you can pull together. It is a good planning tool. I look forward to tomorrow for more of an opportunity to discuss some specific examples.
The Chair: I think a tremendous step forward that you are getting out of Community Accounts is there is a real linkage to productivity. We all pay lip service, and have done so for as long as I can remember, to a knowledge-based economy. We can all rant on about wasting our resources because we do not have a knowledge-based economy, and we are pulling everything out of the ground and so forth, and not getting the benefits from it we should be because we have not linked all this together.
The Community Accounts organization chart has grown from just a well-being chart to an economic engine, which I think is tremendous, and we will be giving forth about that in our report, stealing their thunder as much as possible. I am just joking, of course; we will duly recognize what they have accomplished.
Minister, have you any ideas now that you are about to become a wealthy province, that will be subsidizing Ontario next year, about how you can exploit this tool to build this nucleus for a knowledge-based economy.
Mr. Skinner: We are facing that proverbial million-dollar question. You talk about this province becoming a wealthy province. We are doing that on the back of non-renewable resources. There is a limited window, and we recognize that. Every day that goes by, that window is closing. It might be a 10 year or 20 year window, but it is not going to be a 50 year or 60 year window, based on the information that I have seen. We have a very limited time frame in which to try to realize upon our successes.
One of the things we need to and will be doing in the future, I would suggest, with Community Accounts is right now it is being used to help us from a social development perspective, and a social support perspective, but as I referred to in my remarks when I opened up the session, we need to be able to have our social development and our economic development run hand in hand.
When we start to use Community Accounts for more economic development, then I think we will really be unearthing the potential that exists within it. Right now, it is used for social development because we can see very clearly on a community-by-community, neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood basis, the kinds of challenges we need to meet. This province has lived without adequate financial resources for a long time and because our economic status has not been that great for so long, we have not had the funds to be able to make some of the necessary investments.
Our Community Accounts paints a high-needs picture. There are many needs out there, there are many people, there are many neighbourhoods, and communities that need investment to help bring the level of social development and social inclusion up to an acceptable level.
At the same time, we need to be looking at Community Accounts from an economic development perspective. We need to look at the Community Accounts to help identify economic opportunities that we may be able to identify because of the information that we have in Community Accounts that helps us to get an economic picture of a community versus a social picture of a community. Then I think we will really start to see things moving forward. That is where I hope we will go with it. I think it will be another little while before we really start to utilize that information. I see us catching up now, for lack of a better phrase after "years of neglect;" years when we just did not have the money to do the kinds of things we needed to do.
I do believe that there will be an opportunity in the future to do more economic work which will tie into and build upon the social development work that we have been doing over the last couple of years, and will continue to do for some years to come.
The Chair: We owe Senator Cook a great deal because she kept telling us the great news from Newfoundland, and it is interesting when we are in other parts of the country, Senator Cook frequently says, "Well, I am from Newfoundland," and I keep saying, "Senator Cook, you do not have to tell anybody you are from Newfoundland." Senator Cook, you have a question.
Senator Cook: You are managing change. That is what it comes down to. I want to ask you a few questions about data, data collection, and the availability of it. In a fair number of our meetings, we have heard that there are barriers and privacy laws. There are agencies that do not know what to do with their data. Is your data provincial, or do you rely on Statistics Canada? Are your needs being met and if not, what are the barriers?
What improvements would you like to see in data availability from a position of access or presentations? As I understand it, the government uses the wonderful Community Accounts more than any other agency.
I wonder if NGOs or any other agencies are using Community Accounts, which is available free and on the web. I am thinking because it is so much a part of me, the Stella Burry Corporation, and the homeless strategy, affordable housing, and even my little drop-in centre for consumers of mental health like the Pottle Centre. I can see the Community Accounts from the bit that I have heard from the wonderful presenters today, that it can be of value even at that level, and I would just like to see where we are going with it.
Ms. Gogan: I will answer your question about NGO use, Stella Burry, and homelessness first, and the minister might like to add something. We have a project under way with the Newfoundland and Labrador Statistics Agency, the Poverty Reduction Strategy and the homelessness initiative, to look at how we can measure risk of homelessness, and it is tied to the Newfoundland and Labrador Market Basket Measure. Some of the same underlying data that will allow us to calculate the NLMBM is also being used to create this measure. We are not very comfortable with the name "At risk of homelessness," but it is kind of a notional name right now.
We are working very closely with community partners on that front. We are working with Bruce Pierce, Jocelyn Green and others, to try to get at that issue because we do have a big concern, again thinking ahead to economic changes here in the province. We are already seeing more issues around homelessness and affordable housing. We need to act now so that we do not have a big problem very soon. I know this is an area very close to Minister Skinner, as Minister Responsible for Housing.
Many of our community groups use Community Accounts, as do individuals in some of our smaller communities, but it is quite uneven. Some organizations use it all the time and are very familiar with what it has to offer; some have only heard of it and have probably never used it. Promoting it is one of our goals, and as part of releasing the Newfoundland and Labrador Market Basket Measure, there is some hope that it will re-energize community use of it as a tool. It might make some people, who have not looked at it in a number of years, go back into it to see what information is available. We might get some new users too. We do have a good relationship there and a partnership. Similarly, when we were adding community safety data, we had a lot of community partners involved in that initiative. A lot of the changes that you see, if you look over time, the things that have been added to Community Accounts, they have been added based on what communities have come forward and said they would like to see in Community Accounts as well as government users.
Mr. Skinner: As in any other province, there is a greater amount of usage in the urban core because the capacity of the organizations is greater here. We have regions of the province that cannot access the Internet, so they are not able to go online and get the information. Some of the groups you mentioned in and around the Avalon region would be better able to use that simply because their level of access is greater. Another initiative we are trying, as a government, is to get Internet usage out to anywhere where there is a provincial office. We will bring Internet to that community, and then hopefully other people will be able to piggyback on from there.
In terms of the users it is available for anyone, and I, like Aisling, would say to you, there are groups who use it, but again it is still not understood exactly how it can be used and what it can be used for. In discussions with our community partners, we refer to it as a tool that we use to help us in our decision-making and policy-making. I think that heightens the importance of it for the community groups and the NGOs that we are dealing with, and then in turn then start to mine that data to see how they can use it for their own purposes.
I say to you again I think it is something that is still being understood by people in the community as to what it contains and how it can be utilized. The more educational sessions we can do, the more awareness we can do, the more, I believe, we will get the support of people in using it. It is not being utilized as much as it should be, nor as much as I would like to see, in particular outside the major urban core, but I think, it is something that will become more of a tool used by those groups in the future.
Senator Cook: My first question concerned the availability of data. Do you look for data other than from provincial sources?
Ms. Gogan: Yes, senator, and Alton will speak more to that issue tomorrow. They have some of the problems, but they have overcome many of the challenges. Part of the groundbreaking aspect of Community Accounts is opening up Statistics Canada data for everyone to use because there are charges and fees associated with purchasing the data, and normally when you purchase it, it is only for your own use. Our statistics agency managed to enter into an agreement with Statistics Canada to provide that data in the way it is.
In terms of other data availability and confidentiality, we certainly do encounter issues, and there is always that balance; you want to protect people's privacy and maintain confidentiality, and we do encounter situations where you know that what you are trying to do is not the things that citizens are concerned about.
Citizens are concerned about being identified and having their privacy violated, not having research undertaken that can help with understanding a problem and finding a solution. We are certainly looking at the kind of waivers people sign when they provide information. We have to make sure that we can use that information for research, while also ensuring people's privacy and confidentiality. We run into problems where sometimes we cannot link data in the way that we would like because it was collected for a certain purpose. Anyone who does research has encountered those kinds of problems. It is an ongoing challenge for sure.
Senator Cook: I would like to see that challenge identified, Mr. Chair. Maybe tomorrow you might tell us the cost of getting this data and some of the things that maybe would be helpful that we could list in our report. If we can identify those barriers that are there, maybe we can find a way to roll away the stone.
[Translation]
Senator Pépin: In June 2006, your government published a report entitled Reducing Poverty, an Action Plan for Newfoundland and Labrador. One of the action's plan goals was to highlight early childhood development. Could you expand on how you intend to promote early childhood development in your province? What indicators will you use to measure the progress achieved in early childhood development every two years, as planned?
[English]
Ms. Vivian-Book: One of the major trusts in the poverty initiative, as you noted, is in the area of early childhood development as a determinant. That has been evidenced in the new initiatives focused on through the poverty initiative and the many focuses on prevention in the initiatives. For example, in the initiatives that were funded, there were additional dollars for health baby clubs that promote well-being in terms of supporting women through pregnancy and early parenting. We have seen several initiatives that focus on the early years. It is also complementary to the government's Early Learning and Child Care Plan, which is linked to the areas of early childhood and child care.
There have also been many initiatives like enhancements to our mother-baby nutritional supplement, enhancements to the Newfoundland and Labrador Child Benefit. Many of the initiatives in the area of prevention in particular have taken an early childhood focus. In addition, we are seeing the introduction of fresh fruits and vegetables through clubs, through our Kids Eat Smart program. Many of these initiatives have been supported. I think it is safe to say right from day one and ministers certainly have been very interested and very convinced that to really tackle poverty and look at these issues, the areas of early childhood development and having citizens get off to a good start is critical to that process.
Eleanor Swanson, Director, Wellness Team, Department of Health and Community Services, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador: Senators, I am pleased to be here, good afternoon everyone. We have put on the nice weather for you.
I will begin with a brief overview that will take me a few minutes. I noticed in reading the background materials that you are interested in partnerships and collaboration and community capacity building in those particular areas.
We have just completed the evaluation of Phase 1of the Provincial Wellness Plan, I have circulated our report Achieving Health and Wellness: Provincial Wellness Plan for Newfoundland and Labrador. I have copies of the summary report of that evaluation and if you would like, I will certainly guide you through an overview of that because that may lead to some more information and may answer some of your questions.
I will begin with the report Achieving Health and Wellness: Provincial Wellness Plan for the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. There was a large consultation across the province for this strategic health plan and this key area was identified as needing a particular focus. The province established a Wellness Advisory Council and the membership of that council consists of government and non-government organizations, a huge array of partners. It includes community organizations, such as cancer, heart and stroke, lung, the Mental Health Association, and so on. It also includes professional associations, such as the physicians, nurses, allied health, and it includes all of the government departments that have a vested interest in a link to health promotion and wellness. It is a multi-layered organization.
The provincial government asked the Provincial Wellness Advisory Council to identify the priorities for health promotion and wellness for the province. The document that the government produced was in response to those recommendations. I cannot say that there were any particular recommendations that were not included, it is pretty well universally the full breadth of what was recommended and we see is that things happen incrementally over time. The council is that the council continues to meet every two months and continues to guide the implementation of the Provincial Wellness Plan as well.
For Phase 1, which was 2006 to this year, our focus was on the areas of healthy eating, physical activity, tobacco control and injury prevention. The Phase 2 areas are mental health promotion, child and youth development, environmental health and health protection. This was not all new; there is work going on in these areas as we began, but we enhanced the focus as we moved forward. This year, the Phase 2 document will outline how we will be moving forward with the four priority areas. The work for Phase 1 continues. It is an ongoing process for all of the priority areas.
In each of those focus areas there is a working group or there was an existing advisory committee. These groups worked and developed a paper that they presented to the council where it was eventually approved. Once approved by the council it was presented to the Minister of Health for his consideration in guiding what government would do to address those issues.
The key directions outlined for the Provincial Wellness Plan are strengthening partnerships and collaboration; developing and expanding wellness initiatives, creating new programs and services that we would need to address the issues; increasing public awareness; and enhancing the capacity for health promotion in the province. Under the strengthening partnerships, I have outlined the Provincial Wellness Advisory Council. There existed an alliance for the control of tobacco; I think another unique example of bringing all of the partners that had a stake in a particular topic together. I was dealing with the tobacco issue at the time and what would happen; the minister would receive a request to meet with the Medical Association, the lung, the heart, the cancer. They all joined and wanted us to do something concerning tobacco use. We invited them to pool their energies together, present to government a budget that they thought would help us accomplish what those particular actions would need, in terms of resources, and so the alliance was formed. It has continued for about, eight or nine years and functions very well. Within the Health Promotion and Wellness Division, a health promotion consultant specializes in the tobacco area. That consultant provides the link for us and a tremendous amount of leadership and guidance for the council. We fund the council.
The other area just to note in partnerships and collaboration are the regional wellness coalitions. They sort of mimic the provincial council at the regional level and are more community focused. Their origins came with what was called the Newfoundland and Labrador Heart Health Program. Senators have likely heard of the program that was popular in the 1990s. We had a very strong Health Heart Program and to engage the community, we established coalitions that were invited to take on a broader perspective in terms of wellness. They agreed, expanded their mandate and membership and continue to be very actively involved at the regional level.
A third example of partnerships is the whole area of youth and wellness and I think that is best seen as self-expressed in a project called Healthy Students, Healthy Schools. This is a partnership between the departments of health and education and we had to do was abandon our jurisdictional silos and share and agree to work collaboratively. The first project that we took on was School Food Guidelines and so the Department of Health was deemed as having the expertise in health and nutrition because we have a nutritionist on staff and the Department of Education, of course, is the purveyor of the curriculum for the province. We looked for the link, we provided funding for each of the school districts to have a resource person to help to implement those guidelines and ongoing activities that we see coming up in the future. An excellent partnership was formed that has a focus on our youth.
The final area is injury prevention where a coalition had existed in the past. Through a series of teleconferences, which work very well in the province because it is geographically very large and it is an inexpensive way to get together but serves a very useful function, we pulled together all the groups that are involved in injury prevention. In fact, we expanded that to an Atlantic basis and they have regular conference calls where people in similar groups and the provincial governments in the four Atlantic provinces meet to share information on what they are doing about a particular issue.
The second, I think I have addressed a number of the issues. It is difficult to stick to one particular focus when there is a very broad approach. This has all to do with the initiatives or the programs and services that we have and I have spoken about the schools. The other one that I would like to mention is the Provincial Wellness Grants Program.
When the council developed the Provincial Wellness Plan, the community organizations that were there said, you know, it is fine, we knew we needed government resources at the provincial level. That is how the division of which I am the director was established. We also knew that the regions, in order to provide the support for the communities, needed to have resources, but the community organizations said we need resources too, so what can you do for us? What we did was assign $500,000 on an annual basis for grants that would go out to community organizations and, of course, they have to deal with the priority issues that we had outlined and helped to compliment what the plan was about and move those forward. We have had three successive years of that. It is a learning experience to embark upon something so new and complex and I think we have moved ahead fairly well with it. The area was included in the evaluation extensively, so if we get into the evaluation report, you will see some of the reaction to that.
The third key direction that we have for the plan is increasing public awareness, and the main thing we did there was establish a website for the Provincial Wellness Plan. I must say, it was my first involvement with establishing a new website. We started the website three years ago. It is very challenging to keep things up to date, to keep them well resourced and so on. I think if you happen to go in on it now, you will find that it is a little dated and we are just in the process of getting the staff back in place to begin work on it again and making it a little more current for us, but that was our main thrust.
Additionally all of the regional wellness coalitions have developed their own sites and they are all linked to that. As well, there is a site for the Healthy Students, Healthy Schools program and it is available at livinghealthyschools.com. We have gone along with the times and we are getting public information out through the web.
Our final key direction was about enhancing capacity for health promotion. I mentioned that we have resourced and the funding that we were able to get was from the first minister's health accord. When the premiers met three or four years ago, one of the areas that this province wanted to have, as part of its funding, was the whole area of health promotion and wellness. It was the biggest influx of money I have seen in the 30 years I have been with the provincial government. Those funds allowed us to move forward to do the things that we have been able to do. The lion's share of that funding, safe to say went out to the regional health authorities so that they actually had the on-the-ground staff in order to move things forward. That was a decision that we certainly wanted to make. The regional wellness coalitions receive annual funding from us as well to help with their agendas.
The final slide for the wellness plan, this aspect of the session today, concerns evaluation, accountability, and I have the results of the evaluation plan. We have produced our annual progress report for last year and are working this year's report. I neglected to bring a copy of the progress report, but I will be quite willing to share that with the committee.
The evaluation was contracted externally, so it is unbiased. It was done very extensively with key informant interviews and focus groups and some questionnaires as well. In the course of the evaluation, a great deal of data was collected.
You can see that the key areas that were evaluated reflect the key directions of the plan. Those areas include evaluations on whether we actually established those partnerships; whether we were able to build on the public policies and programs; enhance our capacity, our support for the coalitions; and the fact that we provided the Wellness Grants Program. I think I have addressed the nuts and the bolts and you can see that was the focus.
The key findings confirmed that in terms of partnerships in government and community organizations they did exist at both the provincial and regional levels. There is some discourse on each of the areas that I have mentioned and very positive feedback. One of the notations concerned the Provincial Wellness Advisory Council. What was happening at our council meetings was that it was a lot of updating from the working groups and those were the leads for our own divisional staff. We have enhanced the focus where the individual organizations are being asked to come more proactively, to present about what they are doing and how it links with us. It is up to us to be more proactive and look at the original recommendations put forward by the council. It is up to us to check that the government acted on those items. There are items that the council itself needs to go back again and request that government look at. Finally, we have enhanced the involvement of the council in moving forward the new agenda items.
On the second key finding, and the policy areas, I had mentioned the school food guidelines and smoke-free grounds for the schools and our Healthy students, Healthy Schools program. Those programs were universally held up as excellent examples. We received the evaluation that people are particularly pleased about these programs and feel they were a worthwhile endeavour. The enhancement of the resources was a confirmation of the fact that we had actually done what we set out to do. The funding has certainly gone into the structure that exists.
The regional wellness coalitions also provide smaller wellness grants for groups and organizations at the basic community level. They offer funds to groups that want to undertake something that helps them move the agenda forward in their own individual community. Sometimes these are single events; sometimes they are to purchase resources for a particular effort that they are trying to undertake, whether it be for people to enhance their physical activity, et cetera. Some of the resources go to those types of programs including hiking and nature trails. Signage has received funding so that people can move safely around when they are trying to access the provincial trails.
The grants were well received. The evaluation reflected the hiccups that we had in the beginning in trying to design this and ensure that all of the possible organizations that could benefit from this would have an opportunity to submit proposals. The process we used was to go through the members of the House of Assembly. The members received notification, were offered calls for proposals and the guidelines. They were encouraged to circulate those calls for proposals to any community groups of which they were aware. We also went through the regional wellness coalitions because they certainly have all kinds of partners, so they distributed them to their clientele. We also distributed them to our regional health authorities, because they are our community and they are throughout the province. They are the public health nurses, the regional nutritionists, social workers, and so on, who deal with people in the province. We also dispersed it through them, so we felt that we had a fairly extensive advertising of the program that we wanted to solicit applications from.
I think it was a good sign that we learned from the first call for proposals to improve it for the second and the third, so that helped us move along the way well. You can see some commentary there about the efficiency of it. Certainly, a degree of satisfaction, my goodness, community organizations are so grateful to get some funding to do the things, to put in place the new ideas that they have. I should clarify for you that the purpose of the Wellness Grants Program is not to have a one-time thing, a one off. We selected and we had very careful criteria for selection. A team of people worked on the selection process and then our recommendations went to the minister and the minister approved them. We wanted to ensure that there was an opportunity for sustainability and that there were things perhaps that could be integrated into the mandate of the regional health authority. We did not want it to be a way that organizations would need to come back every year for sustained funding because we wanted to be able to continue to evolve in these priority areas and move forward. It certainly has been a bit challenging but we have some excellent success stories that have become integrated into what we do in terms of our community health programming.
The Provincial Wellness Plan was launched around the same time that we were undergoing the reorganization of the health authorities. The timing was helpful in that as the reorganization occurred wellness and health promotion were slotted in and recognized within the structure of all the health authorities. It was definitely a bonus and a way for us to have a very streamlined approach to each of the health authorities. It became very clear who the people were and their mandate. I think the timing was very helpful.
We received confirmation that we must continue to have a population health approach to include the social, economic and environmental determinants of health. That is an underpinning for our programming: those who need it most get it first and that it is available for the people who are in greatest need. Something like new school food guidelines that provides every child in the school system with the opportunity to be able to make the healthy choice and what we are striving to do now is to ensure that the healthy choice is not the expensive choice, it is the affordable choice.
I know the people who are here from the Poverty Reduction Strategy did make mention of a program which is also an organization called Kids Eat Smart. The foundation undertakes to organize or work with communities to develop and implement school feeding programs. There are breakfast, lunch and snack programs, and some after-school snack programs. The funding for those programs have been enhanced this year with a view to having all of the schools in the province who wish to have this kind of programming, have it universally available. It is a non-stigmatizing approach whereby people pay what they can for the meals. St. John's School Lunch Program started that program. The children come home with an envelope that contains the menu for the month. The parents check off the list of meals and it goes back to the school in the sealed envelope. The parents include the funds they are able to spend. In that way, no child is stigmatized for lack of money, no one knows who paid or who did not pay.
Leadership is essential in the area and I am reaffirming the fact that the regional health authorities have identified key people. We have these people at the provincial level; we have a division, so we know where the leadership is expected and whose responsibility it is. Key to moving any of these programs forward is that we have sufficient resources. One of the areas that still does not have permanent funding is this liaison person between health and the schools. The Health Department funded those positions to the health authorities and assigned to the school system. It forces the link because you have a health authority person assigned to the school system and these people have varying backgrounds. We were fortunate because our initial priority was school food guidelines and I think three of the six positions at the beginning were actually nutritionists, so that really helped and it helped with the others because they were able to help them. What we are finding is that sometimes school district people and administrative people, like school principals who have retired, are quite interested in going back into these positions and they are extremely valuable because they truly understand the system and have such a wealth of knowledge to offer. It is a nice mix of people.
We received the recommendation that we continued to have the resources to support these programs. Additionally, we need to continue working in the area of communications and promotions and we need to get the website going a little bit better.
One of the recommendations from the evaluation about the Wellness Grants Program is really that we need to go into the projects from our divisional perspective and try to get more of the "learnings" from them. That is something that we have committed to do. A consultant who works with me specializes in evaluations, so that is an area that we are looking at. It has been recommended that we not go to another public call for proposals this year. Whether we will or not, I do not know. We may do it in a different way. That procedure overburdens us and we still have some existing projects that we are trying to work through. We will see how that goes and I guess the wisdom is to learn from the things that you have and if you have an evaluation, to take some of that wisdom and use it too.
The last recommendation is that we continue to support the regional wellness coalitions because they are so vital.
The Chair: Thank you very much indeed. That is very interesting and I congratulate you on your progress.
As you presented, you did not mention the use of the information that sits in the Community Accounts. In our report, we will try to address the health disparities in Canada, these pockets of very poor health. Certainly there has been clear identification in the Community Accounts, although it is under the label of well-being but it is very, very similar to and indeed I think might be synonymous with population health.
When you are sitting in your office and you look a the red dots around Newfoundland and Labrador, which are the bad areas, do you think of any particular strategy to get those red dots turned to yellow? The minister responded well to that question, but obviously, this is a work in progress. Everything is not solved yet. You are really far along in health promotion, disease prevention and community services. So do you ever target these areas of lesser well-being?
Ms. Swanson: When the Provincial Wellness Plan was conceived, I said it was based on a strategic health plan. As part of the consultation process for that strategic health plan, we did profiles using the Community Accounts. We organized them by all the determinants of health. When we went out to the health regions, those profiles framed the discussions. We used them to identify the priorities that should be moved forward. We used them well then.
Our government philosophy is that we want to ensure that all of the regions of the province have access to the service or program. In the first year of the Wellness Grants Program, the community arm where you get out and invite new proposals, we analyzed where the grants, the funding had gone and noticed that there were some gap areas. It came as no surprise that the gap areas were not as evolved in terms of community organizations. They are the red dot areas that have higher needs.
What we did last year was take some funding to those particular communities to find out from them, to really work with them, to say we want to have a community grant or a couple of community grants here, these regional wellness grants, so what are your issues? In some cases, those issues were not our priorities, but we funded them anyway.
The Chair: There are obviously tremendous disparities in community organizations too, from somewhat well oiled community councils to smaller communities with very little in the way of organization and resources. Is there any instrument available to help the communities that are not well organized? Is there any organization to help them organize? I do want to say I think the communities that organize themselves do better than having a bureaucrat organize them. The principle to allow human initiative is a good one. However, when they need help is there anything in place to help them out.
Ms. Swanson: The resources that were provided through the regional health authorities were really for that, so the positions were varied. In some communities, they might need a health promotion consultant in another a community a capacity consultant. The consultants were sent to do exactly that, to say look, we know that this community certainly has troubles, has issues. We do not have a close enough connect with them. They are a community that we would like to see our programming reflected in more, and so we have worked with them, either in terms of trying to get a wellness grant there or just in terms of capacity building.
One example was with the Boys and Girls Clubs that exist in many rural areas. These clubs vary in their capacity to be able to move forward. We brought together five or six of them to have them talk about the kinds of programming they were doing in terms of our priorities and healthy eating, physical activity and so on. They were involved in those kinds of programs. We had our provincial resource people, a couple of our consultants, plus the regional people and it really made a huge difference for them. The fall out of that is that they are connecting with each other as well. They were funded last year with some of the grant funding, so what we are hoping is that we will now be able to have those go provincially because they do exist in a variety of communities around the province.
We are mindful of what you said, and so we have tried to put some of that catalyst there, some of that resource and some of the leadership to say, look, you know there is the need and let us try to make something happen.
[Translation]
Senator Pépin: You stated that the same topics are dealt with at partners' meetings every two months. Is there a group dealing with the aging of the population and if so, what is the process?
[English]
Ms. Swanson: There is a division of aging in the provincial government and they are our partners when we deal with issues concerning aging. We were very aware of the fact when we awarded those wellness grants that we needed to ensure that they reflect all ages of the population. Quite a number of grants went to senior groups. Many of them dealt with the prevention of falls and injuries, although some dealt with physical activity and healthy eating.
One program started by a group of seniors is called Moving for Health. The program originated in one small area but we took their good idea and now it is a province-wide program. The program began during our Heart Health Program and the regional wellness coalitions helped in the original program. It was very popular. We ensured that those program resources were made available throughout the province, so it became a provincial program.
Yes, there is a division at the provincial level for aging and seniors, and we ensure that it is reflected in the programming we do.
[Translation]
Senator Pépin: Is this program as successful as the others? Does this group present specific problems that differ from those of other groups?
[English]
Ms. Swanson: It is not a question that I have looked at, so I do not have the answer. Sorry.
[Translation]
Senator Pépin: You stated that the information is circulated over the Internet. However, families and children living in poverty certainly do not have access to the Internet. So how do they get the information? You stated that the information is circulated by Internet. Then how do young people, poor or not, gain access to this information?
[English]
Ms. Swanson: I agree with you completely. The Internet is really used at a much higher level. The programming happens at the community level. For instance, I think that the people involved in the Poverty Reduction Strategy may have mentioned the family resource centres and the healthy baby clubs. A number of our programs are there because they are already identified as the area of the province in greatest need. In fact, they have developed the programming themselves and we have been able to then work with them to help refine them in some cases and expand them. It happens at the community level, yes, not on the Internet.
Senator Cochrane: Ms. Swanson, I want to know to what extent you are aware that this Community Accounts strategy is being used at the community level when you are talking about this wellness concept. I ask because the Community Accounts strategy would define where the problems are and in which particular area, so that you do not have to duplicate programs in areas where they are not needed.
Ms. Swanson: Yes, it actually happens through the regional health authorities because they know their communities the best. The regional health authorities use the Community Accounts for that purpose, so then we will compliment that with the programming. The first year that we did the Provincial Wellness Grants Program, we did not engage the regional health authorities in the decisions around the selection of the projects and that was a mistake, a big mistake. They were informed laterally and agreed with them. In the next go round, we had all of the proposals for a particular health authority go to them. We met with a group at the regional level, not just regional health authority staff but some of those regional wellness coalition organizations were involved as well. They know their communities because they look at the Community Accounts and the information and they know the communities that need resources. So, they would be the very ones that would have helped us when we identified that there were certain rural secretariat areas where we had not one single wellness grant, so we did not have any activity happening there. We worked with the regional health authority to say, okay, who are the key people; we go with them to the community and have them participate. In many respects, they certainly at least co-lead the discussion that we would have around how do you want to address these issues around the wellness plan.
Senator Cochrane: Tell me about your evaluation. Do you have any positive stories to tell us?
Ms. Swanson: Yes, senator I do. The one that is certainly highlighted here in this evaluation is the Healthy Students, Healthy Schools because it has just worked so well. Across Canada, there is a Joint Consortium for School Health to look at this very issue around health in schools, and this has given us an example of how we have actually organized it and funded the particular initiative for this province.
As far as an example and it is not reflected as a specific example in the evaluation, but I mentioned the provincial Wellness Grants Program going out to provide seed funding for new and innovative ideas for how we could address the issues around the priorities. We funded the family resource centres and one of them partnered with an urban centre here in St. John's and one with a rural centre on the Burin Peninsula. There are five components to this program. The next year, they outlined it as a phase one, phase two. In the first phase, they designed the program and identified the resource materials that they needed; they did a magnificent job on it. The documentation they sent us was fabulous. The next year we funded them and they offered the program. They received enough funding to do it in five more of the family resource centre sites. They did the training. They contracted out to the food security network to do the piece around gardening. They have a Level Best Club where a family puts in $15.00 a month and they match it. This helps the family to buy food in bulk and save money and eat more healthy food. They have community kitchens where they can learn to cook. It is the most fundamental way to give people the skills. These skills cannot be learned on the Internet. They learn shopping skills and food preparation skills and with these skills, they have some resources to be able to do the cooking and learn how to provide healthy meals and healthy food for their families.
This year we are planning to have them continue to provide the leadership for it to expand further and then ultimately it will be, and it is becoming, at health regions part of what is ongoing programming for the regional health authority. Does that give you kind of an example? There are many examples like that one, both at smaller and larger levels for sure.
Senator Cochrane: Are these types of programs being implemented? Does the strategy indicate that the program should be implemented?
Ms. Swanson: It is, yes, and certainly the family resource centres are one and as I said, the Boys and Girls Clubs, they are very grass-roots community organizations and very strategic.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Eleanor, for giving us your time, knowledge and your impressive presentation.
Darlene Scott, Senior Program Associate, Community Services Council Newfoundland and Labrador: Thank you very much for inviting the Community Services Council Newfoundland and Labrador to address the subject on population health. I am a senior program associate with the Community Services Council. With me is Peggy Matchim, who co- ordinates the Vibrant Communities St. John's initiative, which is exciting and I think an example that we would like to lay out before you and we would like to extol its virtues.
Before we do that, I want to talk a little bit about several things — first, the Community Services Council — and then I want to address some issues about the voluntary sector generally. I could get a little bit more specific if you have questions, because I understand that you do have some questions. Please accept that I am not a statistician, so I might not be able to get every figure right off the top of my head.
The Community Services Council of Newfoundland and Labrador, in case you do not know about us, has been around for more than 30 years. We are a non-profit organization which means, of course, that we are run by a board of directors, but we do have staff. We have anywhere at times from 10 to 25 staff, depending on how many project areas we are involved in. The kind of areas that we concentrate on and this has been the case for the 30-plus years of our existence, would include things like promoting the contribution off the non-profit voluntary community based sector in our society. We promote volunteerism and in fact, we have about 180 volunteer centres. Certainly, we were the only volunteer centre in Newfoundland and Labrador until others followed our lead, for example at the university. We conduct research in the non-profit sector. We advocate on public policy issues from time to time. We are very involved and very committed to building bridges in terms of cultivating collaboration from the community up and across and intersectoral ways.
Our key areas of interest in relation to your paper include strengthening intersectoral action, if we look at population health; mobilizing and engaging the non-health sectors in the work of the population health; implementing a federal population health strategy: and the FPT health policy framework because that is exactly what we like to talk about all the time.
A little bit about the volunteering non-profit sector in Newfoundland and Labrador and I hope you have had a chance to see some of our research. It is all online at csc.nf.net. It is easy to find. We have done research; we have carried out capacity building and networking within the sector for the 30 years of our existence and what we bring to the table, if you invite us, is the results of surveys, focus groups, round-table discussions and as many networking and collaborative efforts as we can promote. In the more recent years, it has included measuring the size and the worth of the voluntary community-based sector. In Atlantic Canada, we know that there are 13,000 incorporated organizations. We believe that this creates a powerful, social and economic force, not just in Atlantic Canada, but this is well documented across the country. Most of the people in our sector are working at a neighbourhood or a community level and often work within a particular region of a province or a region as a whole, which is true of Atlantic Canada.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, there are probably more than 5,000 community groups. Probably close to a thousand of those or a little over a thousand actually would be registered charitable organizations and of those, approximately half are religious organizations. So we try to track this, we try to do a directory of community services, so that we know who is active in the voluntary community based sector and how many people it actually brings to the tables. Obviously, the voluntary non-profit sector struggles with common challenges and it is only in recent years that this research has been done and people understand about those commonalities. The sorts of issues that rise to the surface when we do our research are reduction in government funding and the inability to secure core funds. I am sure you have heard repeatedly about the over-reliance on project funds; remember I said we are kind of like an accordion, we could have 10 employees now and in six months from now, we could have 25 employees. That has to do with the nature of our funding and it is all based on projects. We think of that as over-reliance. However, it is a strength too because of the resilience that the ability to be flexible comes from in the voluntary sector.
We think that our position really is that there is a huge opportunity and potential to maximize the role of the voluntary sector on the foundation for population health. Voluntary non-profit groups have indicated that in order to continue their work and maximize their resources they require purposeful investments and support in the sector. I know I said we are flexible, but sometimes that can mean that you are sometimes unstable too, so some purposeful investment.
The groups have indicated the need for stable funding structures to lower reliance on project funds. We want to lower our reliance on project funds. We have the need for training and professional development in our sector, just as there is in any other sector. If you work for the government, you want access to professional training and development; if you work in business, you do as well. Certainly, in our sector, it is an abiding issue and concern that you are so busy sometimes delivering a service or getting to a meeting that the training and the skills development is not necessarily there. We believe where better to build that capacity than in the sector?
I am going to turn you over to Peggy Matchim who is going to give you an overview of just one example of how the community based sector can harness skills and abilities of so many people, often at extremely low cost. We like to talk in our sector about the "leveraging" that we bring in terms of a little bit of money goes a long way. In the voluntary sector, if you give someone a bit of money for a project, the next thing you know, that person has a hundred or a hundred and twenty volunteers working on meeting the goals and objectives of the project.
Just before we actually move on, I just wanted to kind of ground us a little bit in an earlier document on population health, just to let you know how strongly we feel that we are on the right track. This is from the National Forum on Health and entitled Canada Health Action: Building on the Legacy. It was published in 1997.
Strong and vibrant communities are characterized by the presence of dynamic local leadership and rely heavily on well-developed networks of friends, relatives, neighbours and other associations.
That is the tenor of the little discussion that we would like to have with you today. Leadership is there, it is almost waiting to be used purposely in the volunteer sector, but we do need some things to fall into place and we are hoping that the example that we give in Vibrant Communities will strengthen that belief.
Peggy Matchim, Vibrant Communities Coordinator, Community Services Council Newfoundland and Labrador: Thanks again to everyone for having us today. It is wonderful to participate in this discussion. I understand you have heard a little bit about Vibrant Communities, so I think I do not need to go over the nuts and bolts about the National Vibrant Communities Initiative and what it is all about.
When we first encountered this thing called Vibrant Communities, many of us had been working in community development and poverty reduction here for several years and I think our first question was do we want to engage in another thing. Is this going to be another level and is it going to be more than people can contribute? We had many discussions about what would be the added value. I think that many of us saw a really high level of added value and particularly because Vibrant Communities is about engaging the private sector as partners in our work, and engaging people themselves who live with low income and poverty, however they define that, as well as community and government. I think we were very familiar with working together, community and government, but not so much with those other two entities at the table all the time. That was very different and has led to some very different kinds of discussion and work. We have a completely new dynamic through this intersectoral approach.
The other thing that is interesting about Vibrant Communities is that we had the Strategic Social Plan in this province, which some of you may be familiar with. It was a government led initiative that was about changing the way government does business. There was a lot in the Strategic Social Plan about government collaborating with community and with other partners. That plan went on for about five years or so and then some changes were made. Because we had that experience, I think, in terms of working collaboratively the Vibrant Communities concept was not totally new to us. We had participated with people sitting around the table from community-based groups and various government departments actually talking big picture about what we can all do to improve our region. The Vibrant Communities concept was not new here and people have wholeheartedly embraced it, especially some of the partners who had really bought into the Strategic Social Plan idea. They were delighted with this concept and even more excited because it is bringing in private sector and people who can speak to living in poverty.
In terms of poverty and poverty reduction, and as community development people working in this city, we knew there was a significant amount of poverty in St. John's, but there was a provincial perception that this was the area of prosperity. "Do not be talking about St. John's and poverty when we have so many issues to deal with as a province with so many rural and remote communities." One of the first things we did and this was actually in the time leading up to Vibrant Communities, was to work closely with our Community Accounts. Over a few years, we were able to expand on the Community Accounts so that we now have neighbourhoodaccounts.ca. Where we used to have one statistic for St. John's, as a community, say medium family income, $33,000, now within St. John's we have 98 neighbourhoods that we can see on the Community Accounts under the neighbourhood level data. That information paints an extremely different picture of our city and you can see shocking disparities where you have medium-family incomes in one neighbourhood of $98,000 and in another neighbourhood of $24,000 annual income for a family.
Having this data and this evidence has really changed what we have been able to do and has mobilized people in a way that we never expected. One of the things we wanted to do was share this information with people who live in these neighbourhoods that we identify as really struggling. We were afraid that this information would be stigmatizing for people and were cautious about how we presented this data on the neighbourhoods. It was amazing that people were incredibly empowered by that data and said, see, it is there, it is in numbers, and it is on that government website.
We have to use income as a measure, of course when we are talking about poverty and poverty reduction, but we know that poverty is about much more than income. It really is just one measure. At Vibrant Community St. John's we have been looking at a few different indicators in terms of identifying which neighbourhoods in our city really need a focus. We look at family income and employment levels and in some of the neighbourhoods, they range between 40 per cent and 65 per cent of people unemployed.
With employment defined as at least one week of work in a year, we know that in these neighbourhoods we are really looking at some hot spots in terms of where we need to focus our energy. Significant incidents of people rely on income support, as high as 51 per cent, 55 per cent in some of these neighbourhoods. In some of these neighbourhoods, there are many adults without high school education. The percentages can be as high as 56 per cent in some neighbourhoods. These are adults between 18 years and 65 years. We are not even talking about over 65 years of age.
I think that looking at a cluster of indicators like that you really start to get a sense of neighbourhoods that are facing multiple challenges. When we talk about population health, geographically we can see where we really need to focus some efforts. That is not to say that poverty is only within these identified neighbourhoods, but it really is, if we want to take a place-based approach and reach people where they live. We have the evidence now, which is very valuable.
In terms of Vibrant Community St. John's, the long-term goal as policy and systems change, which you may have heard from Vibrant Communities National, is not just about getting people together and coming up with innovative projects or programs for the sake of innovative projects or programs. We do want to do that good work and we want to have impact on people's lives. Our goal is to engage government as partners with us in that work and the private sector as partners with us, so that at the end of the day or somewhere down the road we can start to influence how we do business and how we work together, that really is our end goal.
Vibrant Communities has several things that it wants to do, but we have identified six starting point initiatives and one of them is taking a whole community action research approach to increasing high school completion rates for youth. We are focusing on one of our largest and lowest income neighbourhoods here in the city. Some of these neighbourhoods say they have had one or two graduates in the last 15 to 20 years. We are really excited that staff from Memorial University, from the Department of Education, from our provincial government, people from our Poverty Reduction Strategy, and a number of community based groups, are all working together to say, okay, what does it take to turn that around. We really want to learn as we go and do an action-research approach, working closely with that neighbourhood and the community centre located there.
At one of our planning meetings, we heard from employers, businesses and community people that the employers could not find people to hire for the available positions. They said they could not get people and when they did, the people did not stay in the job. They pointed out that the people were unreliable. Meanwhile, at the other end of the table there were people who work with these neighbourhoods who are saying no, wait a minute, we have those people, there is no shortage of people and what is going on here because these are entry-level positions with decent pay, some good benefits that is exactly what would be a match. So my role as a Vibrant Communities coordinator was to facilitate this conversation to continue past that table. What we did was a big employer here, Fortis Properties, partnered with our community centre alliance. We said look, if you will guarantee 15 job interviews at the end of five weeks, we will find you those people, provide a little bit of a curriculum and a little bit of life skills and essential skills training for these people and do some coaching around interviewing and that sort of thing. At the end of that first pilot, 9 of 14 people who were on Income Support moved to employment after five weeks. I mean, we were completely surprised, provincial partners, Human Resources Labour and Employment were completely surprised and so needless to say, this is something we want to continue.
Interestingly enough, Minister Skinner, who is the Minister of Human Resources Labour and Employment, has recently announced some financial supports for the community centres to share this model with other areas of the province where there are high incidents of social housing residents. So, already just one success that came from a very early meeting that we had and I think there are lots more like that that we can do together that cost almost nothing that was really a quick affordable intervention that had hugely profound results on some of those people.
Multi-sectoral dialogue to examine barriers and explore policy solutions related to the transition to work. One of the things that we saw from that Makin' it Work pilot and that we know from other employment programs we have done, is that there are still some policy barriers there. Some people who went through the program and did not move to work. We need to work on some things and we have great involvement from partners from several different departments to do a series of round table discussions this year. Ideally, what we would like to do is pilot some things as we continue with further Makin' it Work programs; we are addressing some of those as we go along.
Looking for Vibrant Neighbourhoods is a project that focuses in on some of the low income and challenged neighbourhoods that do not have community centres. Many of them that do not have the benefit of a bricks and mortar community centre with staff and programs, and they are very isolated within the city. They are not tapping into the programs of the Eastern Health Authority or the programs offered by all kinds of different partners. So what we are doing is literally going in and coffee by coffee, meeting by meeting and meeting the people who live in those neighbourhoods and then trying to make the connections between those people and all of the wonderful programs and services that exist in our city that they are just not linking into and not taking advantage of. That is the goal of that initiative.
The Citizen's Voice Network is another early success of our Vibrant Communities Initiative. We found that when we first started talking about Vibrant Communities and what we wanted to do around poverty reduction the people who were not coming out to those meetings were the people who live in poverty. All of the other partners were there, even the private sector, but we were not getting the people that we most wanted to hear from. Again, we had to go back and visit those neighbourhoods and have pizza lunches and discussions and that sort of thing, and in one of those discussions someone said, you know, this is great, I feel like I am contributing to something, but this should not just be one time. This should be ongoing, we should do this regularly because how do we know what is going to come of this. We started the Citizen's Voice Network and we now have 35 people from all across the city who meet regularly. That is a forum for them to share information, to learn, and collectively to impact policy-making and decision-making. We have set up one meeting between these people and our provincial Prescription Drug Program. They will have a meeting in a couple of months with representatives from the Department of Human Resources, Labour and Employment and will ask questions about income support, the way that is provided, and some of the barriers as part of that. They have said they want this to be a positive forum and a very working-in-partnership forum, as opposed to an adversarial confrontational sort of thing. So our government partners, because they are already at our Vibrant Communities table, are keen to participate.
We have heard repeatedly about not what poverty is, but what needs to happen to move people to a new level of child care. We pulled together an action team where we went back to the stakeholders who already exist here in the city and who have done work around childcare. These people had the wind knocked out of their sails over the last couple of years that felt that much of the work that they had done toward universal child care plan has been on the backburner. We said, what needs to happen? How do we need to rekindle some of that energy and work and keep the dialogue going?
We have a group of people there, including some parents who are very keen to get that dialogue front and centre where it needs to be and tie it back to labour market, tie it back to poverty reduction. At the end of the day, there are six starting point initiatives, involved in our Vibrant Communities, that we were not just doing a youth focus thing and not addressing the needs of the parents and not addressing the needs of the neighbourhood and the needs of the younger kids in that family. We really wanted to start integrating so that if a parent involved in an employment program, can participate in a Makin' it Work program and have a voice in child care. We really want to link the six initiatives together wherever we can.
That is just a little bit about Vibrant Communities as it is happening here. We are fairly new and we are just moving into the implementation phase. You will see as we move into considerations.
Ms. Scott: We have left our considerations for you in writing. However, we point out that if you work in a strategic way towards policy development, the community is there and is able to assist and help, and if you have some ability, for example, to develop some leadership or facilitation such as Peggy brings to Vibrant Communities, you will go a long way. Hundreds of people are involved in Vibrant Communities. They feel that they have some collective purpose in terms of raising incomes and income is a determinant of health. Unless, however, the Community Services Council has been able to put in place a skilled facilitator, all of the things that Peggy has described to you, which are going to bear great fruit, would not have been possible. In fact, it took probably a couple of years even to get Peggy in place. It is always a struggle to get the capacity in the voluntary community-based sector, but it is amazing what can be done from the ground up and could be done in partnership with government if there were, for example, more core funding, a little bit more stability when it comes to projects, more capacity around training. I think it is just amazing what can be harnessed at the community level, but we do need those supports.
I do not want to end on a negative note, but we do need those things to fall into place. The idea of a federal population health strategy is really exciting. That is what we are doing. You know, it is called different things in different communities, but what we want is the same. Our desired outcomes are the same, and I think the key is to build on some of that momentum and coordination to really push that forward and make it work.
We have also been hearing about a federal poverty reduction strategy. Again, there are some really obvious, clear links between the two and if we could all share some of the same common goals and just know that we are working toward the same thing, we are all about it and we are ready to buy in.
The Chair: Thank you both very much. When some of these problems are finally overcome, people like you at the community level will overcome them, I am sure.
We heard from other witnesses that sometimes schools could be used as the community centre, which you can access to the schools and use it as a community centre in some areas. There are other places where it cannot be done, just for what it is worth.
Senator Cook: That was a very enlightening presentation.
You have experienced reductions in government funding. Do the feds and the province, or both fund you? I see that Vibrant Communities receives private funding with the Royal Bank of Canada and the McConnell Family Foundation. How do you get your financial base in place to do what you need to do?
Ms. Scott: The Community Services Council is the overall organizational perspective; our funding comes from a variety of sources. We write proposals to the federal, provincial and municipal governments all the time. We also fundraise, and that is fairly standard in the non-profit, community-based sector. You would generally find that very few organizations in the non-profit sector have a sole source of funding. For example, in Atlantic Canada we have foundations that provide funding. If we were like the Calgary Chamber of Voluntary Organizations, we might have the Muttart Foundation that could hand over anywhere from $100,000 to $350,000 a year, but it is a little bit different here in St. John's.
Our funding comes from a mix of funds from federal, provincial and municipal grants and our fundraising. Increasingly, non-profit groups are trying to develop revenue streams by becoming social enterprises by charging fees for their services. That is kind of a global way that we fund ourselves, but I will let Peggy address the specifics of how Vibrant Communities is funded.
Ms. Matchim: Another thing that attracted us about Vibrant Communities' national initiative was that there were some financial supports attached. Many who work in community have participated in many different initiatives and efforts where we try to work collaboratively, but there was no dedicated staff support to maintaining that collaborative. You know how that works, if it is one person's responsibility to make sure the group meets next month and that person has a proposal deadline or whatever. So what was really exciting about Vibrant Communities is the national initiative provides matching funds for what we can raise locally for the first little while. Then they reduce to, you know, two-to-one funds and that sort of thing, with the idea being that eventually we become sustainable.
Right now, our sources are funding are from the City of St. John's, our provincial government, some foundation funding, and we have two major corporate partners that we are really excited about. As you can imagine, it is a real sell job to get some of our business partners to support this kind of thing because all we have been doing for a year is planning how to reduce poverty. Getting them to that table has been very difficult but, with some of the early successes, especially with the Makin' it Work initiative, they are very excited and they are starting to see the potential of this program. What I have said to them, although it is all talk, I assure you, is that we do not just want your money. We do not just want a cheque for $50,000. What we want is one of your VPs at our leadership team table talking about how we reduce poverty. What we want is your staff participating in this high school mentoring program in a neighbourhood. What we want is for you to participate in the vibrant neighbourhoods where they are really excited about maybe now adopting a neighbourhood and then maybe challenging other businesses. I mean, what they do in the end does matter. It is going to be what makes the difference, but the fact that they are excited and they are engaged in the dialogue is what is really great. You know, it is not about a charity model. That is traditionally the way that businesses, I would say, in this city contribute. You know, they contribute to fundraisers and they do Christmas hampers and baskets, and we said that is not what this is about. We need your brains and your hearts, but we need the cheque too.
Senator Cook: Is there a link to the governments Poverty Reduction Strategy?
Ms. Scott: They have been supportive of Vibrant Communities and one of their staff people actually sits on our Vibrant Communities now. I do not know how long that will continue because Vibrant Communities is St. John's, but I think they see, and we have already seen evidence, that what we are doing is a model. I think there already are implications for other parts of the province. That Makin' it Work model is being shared with four other sites across Newfoundland and in Labrador. I think they see that. They see the potential. This is a model. I will say I think they were instrumental in us getting some financial support from the provincial government because we were in line with what they are trying to do. They see the value and that we can maximize some of the work that, you know, they are trying to do internally. So there have been some strong links to them as they continue.
Senator Cook: I know an agency such as yours from experience with Stella Burry. You needed one person to be dedicated to look for funding and look for context, and it can be really draining on an agency such as yours.
Ms. Matchim: Absolutely. I cannot even believe I still get so excited after doing this for so long. Vibrant Communities engages these people as partners. It is not that we are over here doing something and then we go to government and then we go to business. They are right there at the table with us. So all along, if we say as a group we want to do something, well, right there at the table what can you contribute? It is shared resources, but it is shared successes. In fact, this collaborative way of working is so new that one of the things that we are doing is we have some staff positions tied to these six different initiatives. They are each housed with different organizations, right? I mean there is a logical lead organization that you would be housed with if you were doing the high school in Rabbittown neighbourhood. People are really having a hard time wrapping their head around that Vibrant Communities, St. John's — okay, you got staff all over, no one person owns those staff. It is a real collaborative approach. We know we need to be working that way. I think Darlene said it just before we got here, that the time is right. We know we are strapped for resources. We know what we want to achieve and we have t to find new ways to do it. It involves a combination of funding, with different partners, but also involves how we spend our resources.
Senator Cook: That is a good message, yes.
[Translation]
Senator Pépin: You spoke about early childhood development and day care, and we all know that these are very important priorities. You also stated that the day care dialogue has been discontinued. What happened? I thought you had started a network. There were insufficient funds, but was it leadership that was lacking? What caused the dialogue to end? What stage are you at now? Are you still establishing connections? Those connections were there before this all began because this did work at some point. What happened?
[English]
Ms. Matchim: I do not know that we ever had it completely fixed, that we ever had the solutions to it. When we brought together the stakeholders from child care, representatives from the City of St. John's, the Regional Health Authority, some of the family resource centres, some parents, we realized there was a lot of energy and excitement going into the development of a plan for universal child care. Then when that did not go as people had hoped and expected, they said the wind went out of their sails and they really have not been doing as much in the way of advocating. They all said that their wait lists are ridiculous for child care spaces for subsidized child care. Then they said, beyond our own wait lists, we do not even know what the need is out there in the City of St. John's. I think there is work being done in rural communities to assist, but we have not gotten that far for the City of St. John's in terms of looking at some of these low-income neighbourhoods and what is available to them in terms of child care. I just coordinate the group. I am certainly not an expert on the issues of child care. One the things they really wanted to do was do some research in terms of understanding the needs, and particularly of low-income parents. These people on wait lists are not even advocating for themselves and do not even know how they would go about getting onto a wait list.
[Translation]
Senator Pépin: Even if they are on a wait list, day care services have to function. It is my impression that you are still in the study phase. When do you think these day care services will be established? Is the problem a lack of provincial or federal funding? This is so important to low income families and it is so fantastic for very young children.
[English]
Ms. Matchim: I should clarify that we are a community-based group that advocates for enhanced child care services. We brought together some of the providers of child care to hear from them firsthand, but this is exactly what we are advocating for: people cannot participate in these other initiatives if we do not provide child care. We are a community-based group advocating for that.
[Translation]
Senator Pépin: Do you hold meetings? Do community groups, municipal and government representatives attend these meetings? Are you a member of the group advocating for your cause?
[English]
Ms. Matchim: The Vibrant Communities group?
Senator Pépin: Yes.
Ms. Matchim: Yes.
[Translation]
Senator Pépin: You stated that you look after people up to 65 years old. Where are those people who are older than 65? Does someone look after them or are they not part of the group?
[English]
Ms. Matchim: No, I think there is some confusion. I was just referring to a statistic that shows that in some of our low-income neighbourhoods, for people between 18 years and 65 years of age, sometimes as high as 55 per cent of those people do not have high school education.
Senator Cochrane: I thank you for coming. I am really impressed with what you are doing. It is wonderful to hear all these good things. Are you aware of the Community Accounts strategy? Have you been using it? Do you have access to this network?
Ms. Matchim: All of those statistics that I talked about, the new neighbourhood-level data we have, that is all thanks to Community Accounts. In fact, we worked with them for a couple of years to get this down to the neighbourhood level. That has really informed what Vibrant Communities St. John's is all about. If it were not for that data, I think we would not know what to focus on.
Senator Cochrane: Having the business people involved is number one. We have heard from many Canadian organizations. When you see business involved in problem areas and with problem people and difficulties, they are the people that can come up with solutions. A lot of them have the brains. They have already achieved so much and they are willing to offer something. The more business people you can get involved the better, and you say you have just two on your board?
Ms. Matchim: Yes.
Senator Cochrane: I am hoping that you are trying to get more.
Ms. Matchim: Absolutely.
Senator Cochrane: Yes, put a push on.
Ms. Matchim: We will.
The role of our major corporate sponsor who has just come onboard is to champion the involvement of other businesses. It has been a huge challenge to involve business in discussions about poverty reduction. It is very difficult.
Senator Cochrane: You have two, and from there it will go.
Ms. Matchim: Definitely.
Senator Cochrane: In the Makin' it Work program, nine individuals were employed out of the fourteen. Are they still employed?
Ms. Matchim: Out of the nine, I believe that two or three have since left employment. One of them, I know, is because she could not find child care evenings and weekends and it just was not worth working for $12 an hour. This is why we want the policy discussions hand in hand with Makin' it Work because everyone talks about Makin' it Work and what as success it is. However, we need to look at why some of those people left their positions and why the ones who did not take the positions did not take them. That is what is really exciting about that initiative and that is what we want to continue to do.
The rest of them are working, and several of them have moved on to permanent, full-time status with benefits. I ran into one of them in Wal-Mart the other day, and she said, "I am on holidays, paid holidays, I get benefits." I mean, this is someone who was an Income Support recipient for several years.
Senator Cochrane: I think it is fantastic.
Ms. Matchim: It is.
Senator Cochrane: My dear, this is wonderful. You must keep up the good work.
[Translation]
Senator Pépin: Ms. Scott told us that government funding had been reduced. The document states that it was reduced by 66 per cent. However, based on the testimony we heard today, it was my impression that there was significant support from the government. A 66 per cent decrease is huge! Has it been spread over several years?
[English]
Ms. Scott: I referred to the statistics from the NSBO Atlantic 2003 Report. I can certainly send you the website link so you can have a quick look at that. That is 66 per cent of voluntary organizations indicated that was an issue that they had been grappling with which reduced their ability to fulfil their mission and goals. Close to 70 per cent of the groups reported that at some point, yes, they had experienced a reduction. That is classic and chronic in the voluntary sector. What often happens is you get 6 months of funding and you try to stretch out over 12 months. It is an innovation project and then it is gone, and it does not have legs and it does not continue.
Senator Pépin: I know.
Ms. Scott: Everyone has the same problem, one of many problems.
The Chair: Thank you both very much. That was really enlightening. I do not know where your energy comes from, but you certainly are enthused and I wish you all the best.
Ms. Scott: Thank you very much. We are also extremely interested in the committee that is looking into the federal anti-poverty strategy. There has been a whole layer of really good work in communities about poverty reduction strategies. Of course, you know all about the Newfoundland strategy, or I guess you are going to hear more about it, but these are the kinds of things that people in the voluntary community-based sector have been talking also for many years and want to continue to be involved with, you know, in a collaborative way. We really appreciate the invitation today.
The Chair: We thought we had to address both those subjects at the same time. Senator Eggleton is chairing that particular subcommittee and I am the deputy chair, so we are getting the cross-over we need, we hope, to build the base that is necessary to change things.
The committee adjourned.