November 1, 2010
Implementation of Recommendations in Public Report No. 45 — Last Resort: Improving Fairness and Accountability in British Columbia’s Income Assistance Program
In March 2009, we released Last Resort: Improving Fairness and Accountability in British Columbia’s Income Assistance Program. This systemic report contained 28 recommendations to the Ministry of Housing and Social Development, with various timelines for implementation. The recommendations addressed four areas: applying for income assistance, persons with persistent multiple barriers to employment (PPMB), medical and other documentation requirements, and implementation of previous commitments.
The ministry accepted and agreed to implement all our recommendations, with the exception of Recommendation 23, which dealt with compensation for people adversely affected by the ministry’s delay in initiating a regulatory amendment.
Some of the steps the provincial government has taken to implement our recommendations so far are as follows:
- Three regulatory amendments have been made. As a result
- people who have been actively looking for work for at least three weeks directly prior to applying for income assistance no longer have to conduct a further three-week work search before the ministry will assess their eligibility for income assistance (Recommendation 4).
- sole applicants who have a child under the age of three are now exempt from the three-week work search requirement (Recommendation 5).
- ministry staff now have the legal authority to waive the two-year independence requirement when applicants are not able to meet it due to circumstances beyond their control, as long as undue hardship would result from denying them assistance (Recommendation 9).
- In January 2010, the ministry posted a report called Explaining the Decline in the Persons with Persistent Multiple Barriers Caseload on its website (Recommendation 17). It can be found at http://www.hsd.gov.bc.ca/publicat/pdf/ppmb_decline_2010.pdf.
- In September 2009, the ministry sent a directive that requires its staff to review the documents already on file before asking clients to submit new documents (Recommendation 19).
- In September 2009, the ministry developed a new policy that outlines how it expects its staff to assist people to obtain documents (Recommendation 20A).
- The ministry entered a new agreement with Service BC in order to provide better service to communities without a ministry office. This agreement affects people in the communities of Kitimat, Fort Nelson and Nakusp (Recommendation 22).
- As of September 2009, the ministry had developed new policy and procedures to address the issue of providing written reasons for all reviewable decisions (Recommendation 24).
- The ministry is tracking the number of applications it receives and whether they are approved, denied or abandoned.
- The ministry is using Statistics Canada data to compile a report on whether people who discontinue their income assistance applications move on to employment or educational programs within two months. It expects to complete and post this report on its website by the end of 2010.
The Ministry of Housing and Social Development continues to work on a number of our recommendations which have not yet been fully implemented. We are closely following developments in regard to the PPMB program, where progress has been slower than expected.
There are other recommendations, for example, recommendations 2 and 3 on applying for income assistance, where the ministry did not meet the timelines set out in the report. However the ministry has confirmed that it is still committed to completing them and we are continuing to monitor progress in these areas. Regular progress updates, along with our entire report, can be found on our website.