Personal, attitudinal, and situational support services

Apart from lack of income support, other factors can prevent individuals from returning to, or becoming part of the world of work. To enhance their employability, many people require support services, such as child care, equipment and facilities for people with disabilities, multilingual information centres and services, and accessible information regarding all current services and ways to apply for additional services.

Although it is not within our mandate to recommend specific policies or practices regarding these support services, several issues require attention, as they do relate in a significant way to transition issues.

• Lack of child care is a major barrier to employment for those with young children or children with special needs. It is also a factor for parents seeking labour market information, counselling services, education, and training. Issues of access to child care, its quality, and the hours when it is available become very important to those who need it most. Workers -- most often women -- must make compromises in their careers and social assistance recipients are prevented from undertaking training because of unavailable or inflexible child care facilities.
  
  
• The availability of good-quality child care services not only gives parents the opportunity to participate in the workforce without worry, it often offers children a chance to begin life in a safe, learning-oriented environment. This consideration makes the issue of child care an important one for society.
  
  
• Special equipment and facilities are often essential for many people with disabilities to participate in the work force to their full potential. A commitment to equity throughout society should ensure that people who need specific equipment or facilities to make effective transitions into employment benefit from an appropriate level of support. Often, when their situation changes -- for example, they become unemployed or require social assistance - people with disabilities lose the use of equipment or a facility that accommodates their disability. Whenever necessary, continuity of support should be ensured. This involves the disabled individuals themselves, those who live and work closely with them, governments, employers, unions, and employee representatives.
  
  
• Information about support services and their accessibility are also important issues in Canada, where immigration is a major factor in population growth. The full use of the resources that immigrants bring to our country can only be achieved through an understanding of their needs and facilitating their integration into Canadian society. The recommended one-stop information and service delivery system should help address this problem by bringing together the providers of information and services to meet the needs of local populations.
  
  

17. We recommend that federal and provincial/territorial government policies and practices, as well as the attitudes of labour market partners toward support services (especially child care, equipment and facilities for people with disabilities, information about support services and their accessibility for immigrants and members of visible minorities), be closely examined to ensure that they are consistent and that they enhance people's ability to make effective transitions into employment, rather than prevent them from doing so.