Clients
Receiving Extended Benefits (EBP)
- Clients receiving
Extended Benefits can share accommodations without their social assistance
benefits being affected.
- The exemption does
not apply to married or common law relationships. -These clients will
retain this special status if they go off assistance and come back.
-These clients will come back to the EBP rate and will be exempted from
HIP.
Presenter’s Comment:
Extended Benefits are approved by the Medical Advisory Board which hears
approximately 1200 cases per year. Exemption and discretion practices
may or may not be fully or systematically shared among all case managers
– perhaps this is a point for future consideration and discussion within
the Department, he proposed.
Adult Children with
Income
- Adult children
earning less than $15,000 (and more than $400+/mo.) living with parent
are treated separately.
- Adult child is
expected to contribute $125/month to household and parents’ S.A. reduced
accordingly.
- Adult child is
19 or older, and not legally required to be in school.
- If the adult child
has no income he/she is a dependent on the parents’ file.
- Youth Policy has
priority in case of school children.
- The $15,000 annual
income or $1,250/month is gross income before deductions.
Long-term Needs
- Clients meeting
the eligibility criteria for Long-term Needs designation will remain
at the Transitional Assistance Program (TAP) rate without having to
provide a medical report. The designation is permanent.
- The eligibility
criteria are:
- Clients assessed
by Family & Community Services under the Long-term Strategy
- Long-term mental
health cases referred by Department of Health & Wellness (DHW)
- Clients in
receipt of disability pension under the Pensions Act
- Clients meet
the Long-term needs definition after assessment by the Medical Advisory
Board.
Presenter’s Comment:
It is much better if a stakeholder group (presents) a common approach
(smaller groups often arrive with so many varied and sometimes conflicting
ideas). What’s wrong is important yes, but more critical is to offer workable
ideas to fix it and how to work it through the existing public policy
environment. Having a strong, united voice is critical.
|
Following
the presentation, participant Sue Rickards was invited to respond
to the presentation. |
She posed that in
the view of many at the community level, it feels as though to date, the
government has been only “tinkering” with income and wage-related policies.
Further, the whole system must be refocused so that there are incentives
for working. For example, she said the base amount of wage exemption should
be increased, and should be based on annual earnings, or there should
be a process for gradually increasing it.
People recognize that
a “Guaranteed Annual Income” approach is the better way to go, by far.
Other views include:
- The generally held
understanding that far too much policy is driven by “politics”. This
is in part, a structural issue where policy is formed from an “economic
vs. a “social” perspective. In contrast, people at the community level
know full well that usually you have to do both in tandem.
- Further, poverty
policy is still viewed by many as a “cost” rather than as a valuable
investment. To begin, internally - even reviewing traditional terminology
could lead to a better reflection and understanding of the positives
of such policy. An example would be wage “enhancement” policy rather
than wage “exemption”.
- It has been known
for a long time that a key barrier to maintaining work is transportation.
The current policies do not assist; indeed they make it worse.
Presenter’s Comment:
In a concluding remark, the key presenter cautioned participants to understand
that government works within a set budget. Even when new issues or programs
arise, the funds are more likely to be shifted from another program, than
to be added and supported by new funds. |