The recession hit Canada’s non-profit sector hard. Demand surged. Donations shrank. Foundations suspended grants to protect their endowments. Government support held up for a time as Ottawa and the provinces poured money into the moribund economy, then it too was cut.

Some charities folded. Others hunkered down, laid off dedicated workers and placed a heavy load on their volunteers. They served their clients as well as they could, but had to turn away people who came seeking help.

Innovative non-profit organizations shelved groundbreaking projects and went into survival mode.

Nora Sobolov, who was chief executive of the Canadian Lung Association at the time, remembers receiving a distraught phone call from a colleague in 2009. He was worried about making his organization’s payroll because the money he was expecting for a government contract had been delayed. When he asked his bank of 15 years for a bridge loan, he was turned down flat.

Then she got a call from another friend. Her arts organization had found an interested corporate sponsor, but it needed a bit of capital to get artists started. No one would give her a loan.

Sobolov kept hearing similar stories, watching the growth of non-profit lending in the United States and Britain and brainstorming with others who shared her concern — at credit unions, co-operatives, social enterprises and other non-profit organizations — about creating a funding mechanism that would link Canadians willing to make a modest investment in their community with non-profit organizations that needed short-term help.

It wouldn’t — couldn’t — provide a sustainable income to chronically troubled charities. Its purpose would be to prevent temporary financial shortfalls from becoming life-threatening crises.

“We were just trying to fill one gap,” Sobolov says. “The (non-profit) sector needs a whole range of financing alternatives.”

She had the vision, the contacts and the qualifications (a law degree and social work degree) but Sobolov stresses that it was a collective effort. She sought help from bankers, securities experts, community leaders, the directors of the Nonprofit Finance Fund in the U.S. and CAF Venturesome in Britain. She tapped into the experience of Vancity and the Edmonton Social Enterprise Fund, which make non-profit loans on a regional basis. And she worked with Imagine Canada

The first step from blueprint to reality was a feasibility study to make sure there was a demand for the service. Sobolov and researcher Arlene Wortsman met the leaders of 100 non-profit organizations and confirmed that the need was real. The second step was to approach foundations looking for creative ways to use their endowments and other potential investors.

In 2010, the Community Forward Fund (CFF) was born.

It took another two years of work — painstaking legal work — to build Canada’s first non-profit lending institution. This spring the last hurdle was cleared. CCF won the approval of the Ontario Security Commission.

To celebrate, the CFF invited everyone who had been involved in its creation to a kickoff in Toronto. The event didn’t attract much public attention but for the voluntary community it was a breakthrough; one Sobolov hopes will mark the beginning of a “rethinking of the way we finance the non-profit sector.”

There will always be a need for government support, individual and corporate donations and grants from foundations, she says. But there have to be other options: fee for service activities, revenue-generating acquisitions, partnerships with private financiers and many more.

Since the launch, the CFF has approved two loans; one to an environmental organization that wanted to cut costs by installing a solar panel, the other to an artists’ group that needed exhibit space. Thirty-three applications are in the pipeline.

To qualify for a loan, a non-profit organization must be registered with the Canada Revenue Agency, have a strong business plan, share its financial records and have a substantial stream ($350,000 annually).

At the moment, there is $7 million in the fund. The goal is $20 million.

“Some people would call it a drop in the bucket,” Sobolov says. “But what a drop.”

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1164808–canada-s-non-profit-sector-invents-a-solution-to-gaps-in-funding >

Maureen Smith’s daughter just moved into a duplex after nearly two decades of waiting. Susan MacIsaac’s son isn’t so lucky. Despite a six-year wait, he was rejected for funding that would see him live in his own home.

“We put together a proposal and we got turned down. To this day, we do not know why,” says Ms. MacIsaac at the kitchen table of her north Toronto home. Son Graham MacKenzie, 30, slowly moves his fork into a half-cut strawberry, the lids of his round, dark eyes left heavy from a seizure the day before.

For parents of people with an intellectual disability, the quest to find a home and services starts early and can last decades – something that becomes more pressing as parents age and their ability to physically and financially support their adult children fades. One Toronto man has been waiting an astounding 37 years for placement in a group home. Another middle-aged man recently moved into a nursing home with his mother, after his father abandoned the search for housing elsewhere, because the average wait in Ontario for nursing homes is only about 80 days. Even community housing – with queues of a dozen years in some cases – doesn’t rival the waits of people with an intellectual disability.

The housing crisis follows the closure over the years of institutions that cared for them from cradle to grave. Today, for example, there is one home each in Red Deer, Portage la Prairie and Moose Jaw, and the latter one is slated to close.

That has left parents across the country caring for their aging intellectually disabled children with the daunting realities of trying to cobble together housing and care-giving, not to mention an enormous price tag that is only partly offset by government. To be born with an intellectual disability is to be sentenced to a hardscrabble life: 73 per cent of working-age adults with an intellectual disability who live on their own live in poverty.

“This situation represents an injustice being done to persons with intellectual disabilities and their families,” said Don Gallant, co-ordinator of the Canadian Association of Community Living’s community inclusion initiative, a national program aimed at ending the isolation of people with intellectually disabilities. “To deny people an opportunity to live in the community is a denial of a basic right of citizenship.”

There are no national figures on the number of people waiting for residential housing. But Michael Bach, executive vice-president of the Canadian Association of Community Living, estimates there are 686,000 intellectually disabled people across the country and one of their biggest issues “is having access to suitable and affordable housing in the country.”

In Ontario, 12,000 people are in the queue for residential housing. Garry Pruden, chief executive officer of Community Living Toronto, a federation of agencies providing services and supports to those with intellectual disabilities, describes the wait as “oppressively long.”

Provinces are spending money to address the situation. Ontario, for instance, invested $1.7-billion in developmental and residential services in the 2011-2012 fiscal year. That province’s Minister of Community and Social Services, John Milloy, said he is aware of the sacrifices families are making, saying he would never want to minimize the need.

“I’m aware there is more demand than available resources out there,” Mr. Milloy said. “I have a tremendous sympathy; I understand the challenges they are facing.”

Experts say the issue is far bigger than just increased government funding. The solution needs to be found also with the non-profit sector and business, in addition to families. If it takes a village to raise a child, it may take savvy social enterprisers to raise people with intellectual disabilities.

“The old way, every one relied on government,” said Al Etmanski, co-founder of PLAN, a non-profit social enterprise. “The new way is to lever government money to attract new resources from families, community, philanthropists, social investors and business.”

He helped kick-start the federal government’s Registered Disability Savings Plan, which began in late 2008 and provides incentives and grants to save for future income security for all people with disabilities.

“With the combination of compound interest and all that matching money, if parents started when their child was born, that child would have close to $400,000 when turning 39,” said Mr. Etmanski, whose daughter, Liz, in her 30s, teaches art, writes poetry and is thriving in her own Vancouver apartment.

Other suggestions include finding ways to remove people with disabilities from the welfare system and for governments to create an innovation fund to test and help implement new ideas. Others talk of the need for more affordable housing and having host families that intellectually disabled people could live with, much like foster families exist today.

In Biggar, Sask., Laurie Larson has two sons with disabilities, Ben, 24, with autism and Kevin, 20, with Down syndrome. For her, the ideal solution would be to have some form of individualized funding so she could hire the supports herself.

Under that method, she would use her own money for a down payment on a house, and then help hire caregivers for her sons. This, she believes, would actually save government money.

“The only option [right now] is to go to a service provider who runs a group home, assuming you can find one with an empty bed,” said Ms. Larson. “The big thing is to try and get changes but change happens slowly.”

“Slow,” is the way Maureen Smith would describe the length of time it took to arrange support for her 41-year-old daughter, who moved out of the house earlier this month to a duplex in Toronto. Her daughter, whom she did not want named, was on the wait list for about 20 years for the 24-hour care-giving services that make living away from home possible. Ms. Smith pays for the house but the care is funded through government.

“It’s very, very difficult to get housing and to get funding,” said Ms. Smith, whose daughter is developmentally delayed, aphasic and suffers from allergies and mental health issues. “What’s expensive is staffing. It has to be seven days a week.”

It may be a while before Graham MacKenzie can get out of the house. He was born missing the right side of his brain and the structure that divides the cerebrum into the left and right hemisphere – the corpus callosum. He also has cerebral palsy.

To compound matters, he’s had two brain bleeds due to arterial venous malformations in his brain. Before those bleeds, he could ski downhill and go out by himself; today he can only walk a few steps and must always be accompanied. Like his mother, he has an effervescent personality and is social. He swims, goes to dances and takes art classes.

His mother, Susan MacIsaac, 60, bids on management consultant contracts and works from home to care for him during the 113.8 hours a week that are not funded; he has funded caregivers for 54.2 hours a week.

“My nightmare,” she says, “is that something happens to me and there’s no option and he ends up in long-term care.”

She is currently exploring a program called LIGHTS, paid for through fundraising and families, with some money from Community Living Toronto and government.

If Ms. MacIsaac qualifies, she would pay at least 20 per cent of all costs, and her son matched with someone with whom he’s compatible. Because they are splitting living expenses and care-giving costs, plus receiving government funds, it’s more affordable.

LIGHTS founder Mary Pat Armstrong said she hopes that after five years of being in the program, each family has secured funding from government or other sources. So far, 46 families have a plan in the works for housing and services in Toronto.

That is the next best option for Graham, who hearing this talk, has just looked up from his breakfast plate, now empty. When asked what it would be like to live on his own, he described it as “awesome.

“I want to be close to Mom,” he said. “But not too close.”

Graham MacKenzie’s budget

Graham MacKenzie was born intellectually disabled with cerebral palsy. The brain bleeds he has suffered have reduced his ability to walk more than a few steps. He requires round-the-clock supervision.

Following is his annual budget if he were to live away from home with a roommate and a live-in caregiver.

Rent, including his portion for the live-in caregiver: $16,800

General insurance: $1,200

Telephone: $480

Utilities: $720

Program transportation (for Graham and his portion of the caregiver’s cost to accompany him) $2,268

Clothing and personal needs $4,680

Social recreation $3,240

Contracted labour, including caregiver $53,102

Cost of wheelchairs and making his apartment accessible: covered through the provincial and municipal governments. Graham gets a new wheelchair every five years.

Food $4,420

Housekeeping supplies $480

Maintenance $1,000

One-time cost to set up Graham in apartment (dishes, small appliances, kitchen utensils, bedding and towels) $5,000

Central administration, which includes the cost to administer bills, oversee caregivers and have proposals done on his behalf $4,130

Revenue $45,165 in funding from various government sources

Total Budget first year: $97,520 less Graham’s revenue of $45, 165, leaving a shortfall of $52,355.

Every year after that: $92,520 less Graham’s revenue of $45,165, leaving a shortfall of $47,355.

Source: Susan MacIsaac, mother of Graham MacKenzie

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/for-those-with-intellectual-disabilities-a-decades-long-wait-for-a-home-and-care/article2397837/singlepage/#articlecontent >

Unless you have a child with a disability in your family, you probably don’t realize how lonely these youngsters are. Some of them struggle harder with social isolation than their physical and intellectual limitations.

According to a study just released by Dr. Anne Snowden of the University of Western of Ontario, 53 per cent of these kids have no close friends or just one. Three-quarters don’t participate in any community programs (sports, recreation, arts, cooking, computers, music). Fifty-four per cent of their parents struggle with constant stress to meet their needs.

Snowden headed a team of researchers from the Kids Health Foundation, the Special Olympics, Community Living Ontario and the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital. What it found was that preschool children are generally well-served by community agencies and elementary schools do their best to include children with disabilities in classroom activities. But around Grade 5 or 6, these kids fall by wayside as their peers compete to be cool and join the “in” group.

Boys, who have a much higher incidence of developmental delays than girls, have a harder time fitting in.

Those who manage to finish high school have enormous difficulty getting the training they need to qualify for a job. Many never get a chance to use the skills they have.

Part of the problem, Snowden said, is that smaller communities don’t have resources for these children with disabilities. But even in major cities parents don’t know what services exist, they lack transportation to get their kids to suitable programs or they can’t afford the enrolment fees.

“We have some terrific community programs, but organizations don’t collaborate,” she said. “Parents are sent from pillar to post looking for all the information they need.”

There are solutions to these problems, but they require money and leadership.

The Kids Health Foundation is willing to supply the leadership. It is looking to Ottawa to provide some of the financing.

The Department of Human Resources did pay for the study. But whether it will go further — given Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s austerity directive and his reluctance to fund social programs — is an open question.

The “Sandbox Project,” as it is called, has three things working in its favour:

• It was launched by Dr. Kellie Leitch before she became MP for Simcoe-Grey and parliamentary secretary to the minister of human resources last spring. As one of Canada’s top pediatric orthopedic surgeons, she understood how important it was to improve the quality of life of children with disabilities.

• It has strong corporate support. Last week’s study was released in a well-appointed conference room at the Telus Centre in Toronto’s business hub. Other sponsors included Coca Cola, McDonalds, Johnson and Johnson, Talisman Energy, AstraZeneca and Navigator Communication.

• Disability support is one of the few areas of health care in which Ottawa can act without intruding on provincial turf. It has done so in the past. Two years ago, it launched a national strategy to prevent childhood injury. Five years ago, it established the Mental Health Commission. Twelve years ago, it created a network of Canada Health Research Chairs at universities across the country.

For the next six weeks, the Sandbox Project will attempt to convert Snowden’s findings into a draft plan that would strengthen Canadian communities to give children with disabilities a chance to participate and become productive citizens.

What its proponents need now is a champion in government.

Leitch is the logical candidate; she’s a pediatrician, professor and Conservative MP. But it will be up to Human Resources Minister Diane Finley to decide whether she finishes the job she began.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1120813–disabled-children-get-left-out >

Councillor Mike Del Grande, Mayor Rob Ford’s budget chief, last summer described in blunt terms his “tough love” opposition to some city-funded social programs, including school meals for low-income kids.

Del Grande defended a proposed $400,000 cut to student breakfast programs — he recently and unexpectedly started to oppose the cut — during an hour-long, Aug. 10 city hall chat with then-constituent Hakim Kassam, who recorded it on his iPhone.

“I don’t support the way that’s funded because if we’re going to do breakfast in schools, to me personally, if you have children you’re responsible for children,” Del Grande said in the recording provided by Kassam to the Star.

“The nation is not supposed to be in the bedrooms of the people. But then when you come out of the bedroom and you have children, why is it the state’s responsibility to look after your children? I didn’t tell you to wear a condom or not wear a condom or how many children — you made that decision.”

Kassam, who asked Del Grande (Ward 38, Scarborough Agincourt) for the meeting, did not tell Del Grande he was taping it. He said he recorded it for personal reference and, with the 2012 budget headed to council next week, re-listened to it last week, “to see if there was anything noteworthy involved.” He decided to make it public because he fears socially conservative views helped shape the budget Del Grande and other executive committee members will vote upon Thursday.

Del Grande “isn’t a bad person, per se. He genuinely thinks what he’s doing is the right thing for the city,” said Kassam, who works for a food-centred non-profit and did some work on the Joe Pantalone mayoral campaign. “But I think what he’s doing is fundamentally damaging to Toronto.”

Del Grande did not respond to Star e-mails and calls to his office.

After Kassam broached the subject of Toronto reducing subsidies for recreation fees, Del Grande mentioned he “grew up poor,” never went to camp and took his first vacation when he got married.

Del Grande then noted three agencies serving youth — Chester Le Community Corner,Creating Leaders in Chester Le and Tropicana Community Services — are close to each other in the Chester Le Blvd. area and suggested two could be closed.

“The violence has not decreased, nothing has changed . . . ,” he said. “People come out there with, I hate to generalize, but they’ve all got cellphones, okay . . . I don’t have a BlackBerry personally. I operate on a $23-a-month phone — for business. They come out there with BlackBerrys, iPhones, $200, $300 running shoes, etcetera. Like the priorities are all mixed up.”

Kassam interjects: “But that’s not everyone, right. I mean, I tutor kids who are from Chester Le and they’re, like, engaged in the curriculum.”

Del Grande agrees “it’s not everyone,” but says: “Priorities of people are very different. I know a lady that’s on social assistance. She has three kids with two different fathers, getting social assistance . . . The two boys and her have cellphones.

“Now, $50, $50, $50 — that’s $150 a month for cellphones when you should be thinking, ‘Is this my priority? Maybe I need to feed my family or pay my rent instead of three cellphones for $150.’ You’ve made lifestyle choices. Why then do you ask me to subsidize you when you’re not prepared to make those choices?”

When Kassam counters that people who work hard and have fewer opportunities should be subsidized, Del Grande, a former Catholic school trustee, calls education “the great equalizer.” Kassam raises the school nutrition program as an example, prompting Del Grande’s remarks.

“There are a lot of people, when that welfare cheque comes in at the end of the month, that do exactly that. They go buy their beer … ” Del Grande said. “And we’re being told it’s none of our business because we give them the welfare cheque. I’m from a different mode — if you can’t manage that, then somebody has to help you manage that. And I don’t believe in starving children, I don’t believe in starving children.”

Del Grande complained that “kids have children” who don’t know how to parent. “Yes, there are poor people in the world, okay, but poor people will be with us forever, like it’s been from the moment of time. I think sometimes you have to have tough love, not because you hate people but because they need the support. People should get lessons in budgeting, lessons in nutrition — that’s things to help you, lessons in parenting.”

Del Grande bemoaned the city’s “ticking time bomb” finances. When Kassam asked why the Ford administration backed a big police pay hike, Del Grande said he had no say because the city faced a provincially arbitrated settlement.

“The police are the No. 1 item on our tax bill, they’re approaching almost $1 billion and they’ve had a very pampered life cycle, that they’ve always been untouchable because they’re part of emergency services.

“Well, this year, my position is they are going to be touched because the pain, if there is any pain to be, it should be shared. That’s my point of view.”

Two months after the conversation, the Ford administration agreed to hike the police budget by 0.6 per cent while asking other departments for a cut of 10 per cent.

Del Grande referred often to his public persona, obviously bothered by labels such as “Oscar the grouch.” He lambasted the media, particularly the Star, for “biased” and superficial commentary.

First elected in 2003, he said his family was once threatened with death when he helped fight marijuana grow-ops, and he was personally threatened with death in July.

But the councillor ended on a philosophical note, at one point saying: “There’ll be another day, there’ll be another election, there’ll be another councillor, life will go on.”

What the budget chief said

• “There’s no point, if you have 10 people and one is poor, like the city in amalgamation, there’s no point in making nine people that are okay and one that’s not become 10 people that are not okay. It makes absolutely no sense. I grew up poor, myself, I didn’t go to camp. I didn’t, whatever. Even when I got married, it was my first vacation, when I got married. There isn’t a God-given right, as far as I’m concerned, that people — I — have to provide for you.”

• “We had three organizations, not one — three — on the same block dealing with the same populace — youth. Chester Le Corner, CLIC, Tropicana — three, on top of the church that’s going in there and bringing busloads of school supplies, etc., etc., etc. The violence has not decreased, nothing has changed, we keep giving people fish, people aren’t fishing on their own. People come out there with — I hate to generalize, but they’ve all get cellphones, okay. I don’t know what your cellphone bill is, if you have a cellphone. I don’t have a BlackBerry personally. I operate on a $23 a month phone — for business. They come out there with BlackBerrys, iPhones, $200, $300 running shoes, etc. Like the priorities are all mixed up.”

• “I know a lady that’s on social assistance, she has three kids with two different fathers, getting social assistance. The youngest one is too young. The two boys and her have cellphones. Now, $50, $50, $50 — that’s $150 a month for cellphones when you should be thinking, ‘Is this my priority? Maybe I need to feed my family or pay my rent instead of three cellphones for $150.’ You’ve made lifestyle choices. Why then do you ask me to subsidize you when you’re not prepared to make those choices?”

•  “I don’t support the way that’s funded because if we’re going to do breakfast in schools, to me personally, if you have children you’re responsible for children. The nation is not supposed to be in the bedrooms of the people. But then when you come out of the bedroom and you have children, why is it the state’s responsibility to look after your children? I didn’t tell you to wear a condom or not wear a condom or how many children, you made that decision.”

“I want to be responsible, I want to be fair, I want to be civic-minded. Yes, there are poor people in the world, okay, but poor people will be with us forever, like it’s been from the moment of time. I think sometimes you have to have tough love, not because you hate people but because they need the support. People should get lessons in budgeting, lessons in nutrition – that’s things to help you, lessons in parenting. Kids have children, okay, who don’t know how to parent. Those are the issues.”

Michael’s manic episodes started after an injury stopped him from doing what he loved most – playing hockey. Feeling like he had lost his identity, he took a job as a bouncer at a nightclub, and started abusing drugs and alcohol. His volatile lifestyle came to a head one night when a scuffle with police landed him in Mental Health Court.

Police say he assaulted an officer. Michael, who asked to be identified by his first name, says he was the one hurt in the encounter. But the result, court-ordered participation in recovery groups and therapy combined with medication, gave him a new lease on life. Ontario’s Mental Health Court is a court system designed for people with mental illness. “The opportunity that was awarded to me through Mental Health Court was great. I wish it didn’t have to be my head bouncing off cement that got me there,” Michael said. “I wish it was something a little softer.”

A shortage of mental-health resources in Canada has put police and the mentally ill on a collision course, with officers increasingly becoming the first point of contact for people in crisis. While few police forces keep detailed statistics of the types of calls coming in, officers across the country say a rising number of them involve the mentally ill. In Vancouver, it’s a third of all calls. Research conducted in the small Ontario city of Belleville, population 50,000, shows that each front-line officer attends about 40 such calls a year.

While Michael’s story ended happily – he’s now working and gives lectures to Ontario’s York Regional Police force on what it’s like to live in the throes of mental illness – other cases have ended in tragedy. In Ontario last year, a bipolar woman was shot dead after rushing at police with a knife. Another man with obvious mental-health issues wound up dead after an altercation with police on the street (the incident is currently under investigation by the province’s Special Investigations Unit). On Friday, Montreal police shot and killed a homeless man some shelter workers said may have suffered from mental illness. The case is being investigated by Quebec provincial police.

In response, some forces are devoting extra time and resources to training their officers, and experimenting with more effective ways to approach mentally ill citizens in crisis. But Shelagh Morris, chair of a Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police committee that recently examined this issue, said standards vary across the country. Some police forces, such as those in Halifax and Hamilton, are dedicating an extra 40 hours of training to the topic, and have instituted first-response teams that involve mental-health professionals. Others, such as in Lethbridge, Alta, have less than two hours of training dedicated to mental health.

Ms. Morris said those first few moments of interaction between police and someone in crisis are crucial: “If you don’t respond properly, the results can be catastrophic.”

THE ALTERCATIONS

In August, 46-year-old Charlie McGillivary, a large man who had been struck mute and brain damaged as a child by a car accident, was walking with his mother in Toronto to get a slice of pizza. Police, who were in the area for something unrelated, crossed their path, and an altercation broke out. What happened then is still unclear – it’s under investigation by the SIU – but Mr. McGillivary died shortly afterward.

A few months later, Toronto’s Sylvia Klibingaitis told an emergency dispatcher that she was bipolar and wanted to kill her mother. When police arrived at the scene she ran at them with a large knife and was shot dead.

These cases are at one end of an extreme, but illustrate the high stakes often involved when mental illness plays a role in an altercation with police.

Mike McCormack, president of the Toronto Police Association, says officers have to deal with the danger first when they respond to a call, to protect themselves and the public.

“The mental-health issues sort of take a back seat when our officers are exposed to people with weapons and violence,” Mr. McCormack said. “The priority at those calls is dealing with that immediate threat.”

Lawyer Julian Falconer, who has represented the families of mental-health patients and those who have taken legal action against the police, says officers must differentiate between a situation that requires force and one that can be de-escalated verbally. “It’s not true that we should react exactly the same, simply because the threat is there.”

The closing of beds and the movement to deinstitutionalized care has created this situation, said Dorothy Cotton, a psychologist who has reviewed officer training across the country.

“To a large extent, the whole situation is not a police problem,” Dr. Cotton said. “It’s a problem that ended up with police.”

Recently leaked Alberta Health Services memos cite a “critical” shortage of in-patient mental-health beds and an “acute shortage of psychiatrists.” Budget cuts have forced B.C.’s Vancouver Island Health Authority to reduce the number of caseworkers and hospital beds for the mentally ill. In Ontario, the average waiting time for community-mental-health services in 2008 was 180 days.

Toronto police have declined to answer questions about the McGillivary case, or how they are trained to deal with the mentally challenged or mentally ill, until the investigation is complete.

Officers were cleared in the death of Ms. Klibingaitis, but her sister, Anita Wasowicz, wonders if things could have turned out differently, especially since her sister told the 911 dispatcher she was bipolar.

“That was a cry for help,” Ms. Wasowicz said.

THE CLIENTS

They are known as “the clients” – the people with mental illness and histories of violence who are repeatedly the focus of 911 calls.

In Edmonton, the responders are tandem teams of mental-health professionals and police officers, trained specifically to deal with crises. On a winter afternoon, Constable Kevin Harrison and Tanya Hansen are sitting in a cruiser outside a house in the city’s east end. The client this day is a young man in his 20s who is threatening family members, living with the delusion that the police are out to get him.

It takes a couple of hours, but Constable Harrison and Ms. Hansen succeed in talking the client down. They then spend eight hours waiting in a hospital emergency room, so the man can get medical attention. “Some of [the clients] love us and remember how we treated them,” Constable Harrison said. “Others hate us.”

The tag-team approach has had success in Edmonton, but it’s a model that’s not applicable everywhere.

The Ontario Provincial Police said it doesn’t use joint response teams, largely because some rural areas lack the required resources and there is a lack of demand. (A team is being considered by the OPP in Collingwood, however, after the death of a schizophrenic man in June, 2010, who was tasered after becoming aggressive outside a group home.)

The Toronto Police Service teamed up with mental-health workers after the death of Edmond Yu, a schizophrenic man who took a hammer out of his pocket on a bus and was shot by police in 1997. But the teams are a secondary response – the scene must first be deemed safe by front-line officers. Critics also say the teams are inadequate because they operate in only 10 of 17 policing divisions and only for 10 hours a day.

“You have to be in crisis in certain hours of the day, in certain parts of the city,” said Mr. Falconer, who represented Mr. Yu’s family.

Across Canada, training dedicated to mental illness is also sporadic. For new recruits, it ranges from one to 24 hours, according to a 2008 study co-authored by Dr. Cotton. “There are many police officers, who, the only formal training they would have had would have been in the police academy,” she said.

Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews said it’s inevitable response will differ across the province where geography and populations differ. “It’s not going to be the same across Ontario. Having said that, there are certain standards that we need to implement provincewide,” she said.

In British Columbia, a 10-hour training program in crisis intervention and de-escalation will become mandatory for all officers in the province on Jan. 30. It is a result of recommendations made by the public inquiry into the death of Polish émigré Robert Dziekanski, who was tasered five times by RCMP officers at Vancouver Airport and died in 2007.

And the city of Hamilton and York Region have adopted a training model that was developed in Memphis, Tenn., that gives front-line officers an extra 40 hours of training in de-escalation and recognizing mental illness.

Michael is a part of that training. On this day, he addresses the crowd of plain-clothes police officers with confidence, his bipolar and borderline personality disorder under control. They hang off his every word. Until this point, they’d heard presentations and talked about how to react in certain situations, but when Michael took centre stage, it allowed them to put a face to the people they’re responding to.

“You have the opportunity to be the first person on the scene of a crisis,” he told the class, “and you can make all the difference.”

With reports from Josh Wingrove in Edmonton and Sunny Dhillon in Vancouver

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/police-learn-how-to-deal-with-the-mentally-ill-in-crisis/article2295503/singlepage/#articlecontent >

Three days before the House of Commons rose for its Christmas recess, a parliamentary committee quietly tabled a shocking report.

It was called Ending Violence Against Aboriginal Women and Girls. But it wasn’t a plan of action. It wasn’t even a commitment to do better. It was a self-congratulatory compendium of existing programs.

Only one MP, 22-year-old New Democrat Mylène Freeman, cared enough to speak out. “This report does not really broach the subject of violence,” she said. “It offers no recommendations whatsoever and does not acknowledge the humanitarian crisis facing aboriginal women.”

The rookie parliamentarian spoke more in sadness than in anger.

It was left to Amnesty International to supply the outrage. The human rights group has been fighting to protect Canada’s indigenous women — who are victims of violent crime four times as often as non-aboriginal women — since 2004. “This represents a troubling and regrettable step backward,” said Alex Neve, secretary-general of the human rights organization.

He pointed to issue after issue overlooked by the Tory-dominated committee.

• It said nothing about the near-absence of emergency shelters for aboriginal women fleeing domestic violence.

• It said nothing about the indifference of many police forces to reports of missing and murdered aboriginal women.

• It said nothing about Canada’s failure to meet its obligations under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

• It offered no support to families of missing and murdered women.

• It didn’t even mention that abject poverty compels aboriginal women — especially those living on reserves — to stay with their abusers.

The only solace Amnesty International could find in the 65-page document was a six-page dissenting opinion from the NDP. It said: “New Democrats recognize that, in order to break the cycle of violence affecting aboriginal women, action is needed now. We are calling for a thorough, collaborative, culturally appropriate national strategy.”

There is virtually no chance of that happening.

The Conservative government, which controls Parliament, can do as it wishes. It is clear it does not consider the disproportionately high rate of violence against aboriginal women a priority.

What makes this particularly heartbreaking is that the same committee produced a strong, forthright interim report 10 months ago. It travelled across the country and heard from 150 witnesses, many with shocking stories, and concluded: “It is the silence which is the greatest shame of all. It is the silence of those of us in the majority who chose to turn a blind eye to this violence — cases of missing aboriginal daughters and mothers which never make the headlines, epidemics of suicide which don’t elicit an outpouring of concern. It is this silence which is complicit in allowing the situation to continue.”

The committee’s interim report, entitled Call into the Night: An Overview of Violence Against Aboriginal Women, proposed a comprehensive strategy, taking into account all the factors that make aboriginal women vulnerable to chronic neglect and violence. It was supported by all parties.

What happened?

An election intervened. The Conservatives won the parliamentary majority they had long coveted. The membership of the status of women committee changed; all but two of the original MPs are gone. So is its chair, former Liberal status of women minister Hedy Fry, a Vancouver physician, whose hand guided the interim report.

But that is only part of the answer. The opposition parties — except three NDP neophytes — didn’t take a stand. The Native Women’s Association of Canada, bought off by dribs and drabs of government funding, didn’t raise an outcry. The Assembly of First Nations, made up primarily of male chiefs, was silent. And Canadians — because they didn’t know about the report or felt helpless — let the issue fall through the cracks.

At last count (2010), 582 cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women had been documented. They died at the hands of drunken spouses and strangers. They perished at home, on lonely highways, under bridges, in rooming houses and at serial killer Robert Pickton’s pig farm in Port Coquitlam outside Vancouver.

The violence goes on. But Canada doesn’t seem to care.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1110118–goar-parliament-fails-native-women >

This time last year, Mark, a lanky, soft-spoken 18-year-old, was just another lost youth in the big city – homeless, unemployed and on his own. It wasn’t that he’d left his family – his family had left him. His mom had moved back to her country of origin and parked him with some cousins, who were not exactly thrilled to have him.

Today, Mark has a trade and a future. He wants to do graphic design in a commercial print shop. “When your family won’t look after you, you have to learn how to look after yourself,” he told me.

Mark (not his real name) found a way ahead at Eva’s Phoenix, a youth shelter in Toronto where kids can stay for up to a year. But Eva’s is much more than a roof over their heads. It teaches them how to look after themselves. They learn how to cook, clean, do their laundry, resolve conflicts, save their money, pay their bills and budget. They learn what work they might be good at. Eva’s focuses on moving young adults into skilled trades that have a real career trajectory. “The philosophy is to encourage them to get hands-on and shape their own futures,” says general manager Andrew Macdonald, who radiates intensity and enthusiasm.

Mark lives here along with 49 other kids, in housing that was built inside an old fire-truck repair shop donated by the city. It doesn’t look like an institution. It looks like a streetscape, with small-scale house fronts and flower planters. The kids have their own keys. When the place was built 11 years ago, some of Eva’s clients helped with the construction. One of them, a girl who worked on the drywall team, later went to architecture school. Eva’s other programs reach a couple of thousand kids a year.

Social services come in all shapes and sizes. Some are remarkably effective, and some are not. Some are nimble and creative, and some are not. The best ones change people’s lives. But too many of them mistake activity for results. As Warren Buffett said, “Giving money away is easy. Giving money away well is fiendishly difficult.”

Lots of charities work with youths at risk. But these kids are highly transient. “Probably eight of 10 of these charities will tell us they aren’t able to track anything,” says Greg Thomson, director of research for Charity Intelligence Canada. “Eva’s stands out because they create a connection with the kids, and they’re actually able to demonstrate the impact they have.” That’s why Charity Intelligence has named Eva’s as one of its 33 top charities of the year.

Most youth homeless shelters are basically revolving doors. Eva’s aims to get the kids out of the system. Its approach is impressively entrepreneurial. It has built strong connections with both trade unions and corporations, which are major donors and also potential employers. It even runs a print shop that operates as a regular commercial printer as well as a training school. That’s where Mark is learning the intricacies of print work and quality control. Sometimes the graduates come back to tell their stories. One of them now runs a FedEx shop with a $1.5-million budget.

Good social-service agencies are incredibly important, because the government can’t possibly do what they do. Governments aren’t flexible, efficient or smart enough. But social-service agencies, like everybody else, will have to get much better at what they do. They’ve got to compete harder than ever for donor money. And donors are no longer content with simply feeling good about themselves. They want to know their money’s working hard – for them, and for young people like Mark.

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/margaret-wente/charities-working-hard-for-your-money/article2276873/ >

Charity begins at home. But it isn’t supposed to end there. And yet it does end closer to home in some regions than in others. For the thirteenth year in a row of the Fraser Institute’s annual tracking report of generosity in the United States and Canada, Quebec has come out on the bottom of the generosity scale on the charity scale.

Of the provinces, Manitobans are the biggest givers, with 26% of those filing taxes donating to a registered charity and 0.89% of total income donated. Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island tied for second place. PEI had a higher percentage of tax filers donating to charity than Saskatchewan (25 per cent vs. 24.7 per cent), while Saskatchewan had a higher percentage of total income donated to registered charities (0.72 per cent vs. 0.71 per cent). Ontario, Canada’s largest province, tied Alberta for fourth place with 24.2 per cent of its tax filers donating 0.74 per cent of total income to registered charities.

And then there’s Quebec. Oh dear. Only 21.7 % of Quebecers claimed donations to registered charities and gave only 0.30% of their total income to charities. Of the average dollar value, Alberta led with $2,112. And Quebec limped in at $606, half the national average of $1,399.

Lest Albertans and Manitobans get swelled heads, they should know that no Canadian provinces are a patch for generosity on the Americans. A full 26.6% of American tax filers donated to registered charities, compared to 23% of Canadians. Country-wide, Americans gave 1.32% of their aggregate personal income to charity, more than double the 0.64% that Canadians gave.

What’s up with these statistics? Well, one clue to deconstructing the Canadian figures and in particular Quebec’s lousy performance comes from the news release: “Utah was by far the most generous jurisdiction in North America, with 33.4 per cent of tax filers donating 3.09 per cent of the total income earned in the state—nearly three-and-a-half times the share of aggregate income donated by Canada’s top province (0.89 per cent), Manitoba.”

Syllogism #1: Mormons constitute about 60% of the state of Utah’s population. The LSD Church is heavy on charity. Mormons give a lot to charity. I’m not saying religion is the only factor, I’m just saying it can’t be a coincidence. In any case, many other reports show that observantly religious people in general give more to charity than non-religious people. America is in general a more religious country than Canada, and therefore a more generous country.

Syllogism two: Big governments assign all responsibility for social justice to the state. Smaller governments assign some responsibility to the state and some to the individual. Statism dampens the impulse to be generous at an individual level.

Quebec scores high – or rather low – on both syllogisms. Quebec is the least religious of the provinces (and in fact the most militantly anti-religious). Quebec is also the most statist (and highly taxed) of the provinces. Quebecers figure their taxes are taking care of all the social problems, or should be taking care of them, and it is therefore no surprise that they are the least likely to take responsibility for the afflictions of others. Which is a great argument against statism.

Syllogism three: Taking personal responsibility for alleviating the sufferings of others is the mark of a mature individual. Statism tends to suffocate the blessing of empathy. Statism promotes civic immaturity. One more in a long litany of reasons for working to bring down the size of government.

< http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/12/15/barbara-kay-when-it-comes-to-charity-quebec-still-cant-find-its-wallet/ >

Businesses in Ontario will soon be required to provide better customer service to those with disabilities as the province rolls out a much-anticipated new policy.

“It’s a first step, a very positive step and it will help business just as much,” said John Milloy, the Minister of Community and Social Services in an interview on Sunday.

Under the new standards, it will be mandatory as of Jan. 1, 2012, for all businesses to have a plan to train employees to provide services to those with disabilities.

The accessibility standard for customer service is part of the Integrated Accessibility Standards Regulation under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, and applies to all organizations in the province that provide services and have one or more employees.

The core goal of the AODA, created in 2005, is to make the entire province accessible to the disabled by 2025.

Accessible customer service is not just about building ramps or installing automatic door openers, said Milloy. “It’s about making small changes to help make life easier for those with disabilities.”

For example:

• Accommodating a customer’s service dog.

• Writing answers to questions for someone who is deaf.

• Using simple language and speaking slowly and in short sentences when helping someone with a developmental disability.

• Accommodating those who accompany someone with a disability.

For businesses with fewer than 20 employees, it means creating a plan and training staff, while for larger organizations, it means also informing the ministry how the plan is being implemented.

The standard is a step in the right direction and a long time coming, said David Lepofsky, chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance, a disability consumer advocacy group that works to support the full and effective implementation of accessibility standards in Ontario.

“It doesn’t have as much detail as we would have liked but it takes (time for) organizations to tune their minds as to what they can do,” he said.

Making changes in how they deal with those with disabilities makes good business sense, Lepofsky pointed out. “Everyone eventually gets a disability. So good service for those with disabilities is ultimately good for everyone.”

One in seven Ontarians face barriers to accessing jobs, goods, services, education and community and social activities but that will increase to one in five within 20 years, says the ministry.

“Most businesses will want to find the best way to accommodate individuals who have disabilities and will have a plan in place,” said Milloy. “Providing accessible customer service is easy to do and means our businesses can attract the spending power of more customers.”

The new standard doesn’t mean businesses have to turn everything upside down, he added. “The idea is to be do things differently to accommodate. It’s about changing the culture a bit,”

But the standard is mandatory and while fines will be as last resort, they will be imposed.

Fines range from $200 as an administrative penalty to as much as $50,000 to $100,000 a day.

The four other components under Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act are transportation, information and communication, employment and environment construction. These have to be implemented by 2025.

< http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1096914–better-service-for-disabled-key-goal-of-new-policy >

Every day, most of us wake up with a sense of purpose, we may not want to go to work or to school, but we do. Many of us feel like it’s a chore.

Most of us don’t realize how lucky we are to have something productive to do in our day. Imagine waking up every day with no schedule, no work, little money and most likely no means of transportation other than walking because a car or even the bus pass is beyond your reach.

Think about what it would be like to live alone, with few friends and often no family contact. That is how many people with serious mental health issues live. Isolation is very common. Loneliness sets in, especially in the winter months.

Because many people who live with a serious mental illness often live on Ontario Disability Support, they have very little money for anything other than the essentials. Most people we know have an average monthly income of $1,000. Their rent is often $600 per month or more. Phone and cable are luxuries that most folks cannot afford; some choose to have it because it is their only form of entertainment and a connection to the outside world. Only a few people have a computer or Internet. Healthy nutritious food choices are not always possible. HST added to utilities has made life even more difficult for persons living below the poverty level.

Although a great deal of work has been done in local mental health community support programs, we still have a long way to go. Fortunately, mental health agencies are now looking at a recovery model and working very hard at encouraging paid employment in meaningful jobs. Lower cost housing is available to those who live on fixed incomes, and community stakeholders are creating opportunities including education that promotes a healthier lifestyle.

In 2006 the Ministry of Health invested funding in the Mental Health Network (formally the Chatham Kent Consumer and Family Network). We have a number of roles in the community. First and foremost, we act as the voice of persons living with mental illness both in Chatham-Kent and across the province. We provide information, guidance, and education to all community stakeholders.

We also link people to services they might not know about. We make referrals as requested. We provide daily meals and offer education around healthy eating, budgeting and nutrition. We offer exercise and fitness programs every day.

Self-help groups are facilitated by our staff and community partners. They include topics such as living with depression, anxiety groups, relationships, coping with the holidays etc. We also offer peer support. A youth group is available to persons 16-32 every Wednesday. It is peer-led and has an educational, leisure/recreation component. Our social recreation programs are always fun filled and enjoyed by more than 300 people locally.

The most important thing that we offer is an opportunity to be together in a safe, encouraging, healthy environment. We encourage a sense of purpose both in our daily programs and in the community. Many of the people who attend our programs also teach groups. They share experiences and knowledge about coping and living well in spite of a mental health diagnosis. They offer hope, and share their stories of recovery.

If you would like more information about our programs or to view our monthly calendar, visit www.ckcfn.com or call 519-351-3100. We are located at 235 St. Clair St. in Chatham.

Kelly Gottschling is the executive director of the Chatham-Kent Consumer and Family Network.

< http://www.chathamdailynews.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?archive=true&e=3387327 >