b.) What is not available is:

  • financial assistance to women who are not on welfare or family benefits, who prefer to work to support their family, but whose wages are insufficient to keep the family at or above the poverty line and who are unable to attend adult basic education programs at a community college or university because of accessibility constraints such as distance, scheduling, tuition, transportation, etc.

  • support services for adult basic education services offered in the evening

  • widely available support services for programs offered through local boards of education and community agencies.

c.) Additional problems:

  • those who are on unemployment insurance benefits are not supposed to be attending school full-time unless they are approved Manpower students. They are supposed to be out looking for work full-time and live under constant threat of having their benefits disallowed, of having to pay back benefits obtained "under false pretenses", and of having to leave school long enough to work at an unskilled job to requalify for unemployment insurance benefits. Such restrictive rules result in wide-spread "survival" behavior (i.e. rule-bending by both students and teachers).

  • the time, energy and skill required to find what information we were able to report above discouraged even this committee. In addition the rules and regulations involved in applying for money are very confusing. What must this process be like for an undereducated woman?

  • there are no criteria to define educational need which could easily be translated into financial need. The Canada Assistance Plan has developed a system for defining social and child care needs, which in combination with economic need determines how much and what type of assistance a family or woman will receive.

Basic problems

1.

Information on the subject of financial assistance for women wishing to attend adult

basic education programs is hard to find, conflicting and very confusing. In each province we require a core of up-to-date information which would be easily accessible to all women and all groups which counsel women. We refer you to a booklet (see Appendix B) which was recently produced by the Women's Action Group in Ontario, entitled Taking What's Ours. This is a good starting point for general information (at least in the Ontario region), but more detailed information needs to be made available through provincial and municipal sources.
 
2.

Financial assistance, either direct or indirect, is not readily available for women

requiring adult basic education programs. When it is available, the administrivia required to obtain it necessitates skills and knowledge which the potential user may not have, and more time, money and energy than such women have at their disposal.
 
3.

There are no criteria for educational which which could be translated into financial

assistance; priority for admissions, service provision, and distribution of resources. Such criteria would be useful in making the most difficult decisions involved in the division of available resources.
 
4.

The rules for obtaining financial assistance or for documenting financial need are so

complex and change so rapidly, that by the time a woman has completed the required forms, the rules have often changed yet again.

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