HOUSING

The biggest problem facing solesupport mothers at Opportunity for Advancement is housing. Ninety-five percent of this group's clients are sole- support mothers, and ninety percent are on family and government assistance. The average age is thirty-two, and the average number of children is two. Three years ago two thirds of these women lived in public housing. Now only half do. There are now 8,000 - 12,000 families on the waiting list for subsidized housing, and the wait is as long as two years.

In a city of conspicuous affluence, these women are forced to spend as much as eighty percent of their meager incomes on sub-standard, inadequate housing. The stress and hopeless- ness are so great that a growing number of mothers are giving up their children to Children's Aid to ensure adequate care and nutrition.

When a woman comes to Opportunity for Advancement she knows she wants a change but is uncertain about what to do. She begins with a seven-week program which involves learning how to access various community resources, building self-esteem, examining her rights, arranging child care, and preparing for further education.

As well as examining her options for job readiness training, she may also opt to stay at home in her traditional role until her children are older. She learns to respect this role, without guilt. This is significant because there is tremendous social pressure on sole support-mothers to work at anything, no matter how menial and at what cost to the children.

CHILD CARE

Adequate child care, or the lack of it, is the greatest problem facing the women at Focus on Change. All the clients are sole-support mothers, on social assistance, with an average age around thirty-one. They are separated or divorced. Academically, they function between grade five and eight level.

Their previous work histories have been marginal at best: they worked at low skill, menial jobs for poor wages and experienced frequent prolonged unemployment. Where does employment exist that takes into consideration a mother's responsibility to her children? Shift work is almost impossible because daycare is generally just that: daycare. Mothers often need time off to tend sick children. Time off without pay is no solution, because they are seen as unreliable. They soon lose their jobs and all opportunity for advancement.

Licensed child-care openings exist for only fifteen percent of pre-school children. Eight hundred subsidized spots in day care are now frozen, with a slow trickle of openings. Huge waiting lists for day care exist in some areas. Since they are not paid the day care allowance directly, women cannot make their own child care arrangements. Given all these anxieties, it takes remarkable fortitude for women with children to attempt any long range planning preparation.

Skills upgrading, vocational exploration, lifeskills and personal counselling provide the bridge to a more stable future. With these bridging programs, fifty-five percent of the mothers graduate to full or part time employment while they continue their parental responsibilities. Approximately sixty percent of all women in these programs do continue with further education, entering a variety of ACTEW and college programs for vocational training.

NON-TRADITIONAL TRAINING

West End' Machining serves that minority of women seeking non-traditional, skilled, technical work. Sixty percent of working women in Canada remain occupationally segregated, receiving an average wage 60% that of the average wage for men.