MEETING PREVIEW: County Social Services Meeting for June 14, 2023

This month at Wellington County’s Social Services Committee, there’s going to be a lot of information. It’s going to have financial information, planning information, information about who’s being helped by the programs, and there will be some delegates too. Whether your concern is housing, social assistance, or childcare, there is something for everyone at this month’s meeting in the Guthrie Room.

NOTE: This meeting takes place at 1 pm in Guthrie Room at the Wellington County Administration Centre on Woolwich Street.

Financial Statements and Variance Projections as of May 31, 2023 – Ontario Works is currently showing a positive variance because of lower than budgeted case loads, but there is an expectation that the variance will disappear as the numbers of cases continue to rise over the next few months. Children’s Early Years is also trending under budget, with many areas from staffing to supplies delivering savings in the first five months of this year, but that too is expected to change as the year goes on.

Meanwhile, housing is currently looking at a $2.4 million negative variance, which is being driven by higher than expected costs for maintenance and the care given to the people affected by the fire at an apartment building on upper Wyndham earlier this year, but the biggest portion is $1.3 million in cost overruns for the Homelessness Prevention Programme.

Delegations:

1) Erin Caton, the Ward 1 Councillor from Guelph, will take to the committee about Bill 22. Presumably this is the federal government’s Bill 22 which is meant to “reduce poverty and to support the financial security of persons with disabilities by establishing the Canada disability benefit and making a consequential amendment to the Income Tax Act.”

2) Stuart Beumer, the County’s Director of Ontario Works, will provide an overview of his program. (See more info below.)

Tender Award: Window and Door Replacement at 232 Delhi Street – B.E. Construction out of Etobicoke has the winning bid to replace the exterior living room and bedroom windows, plus exterior suite door and storm doors at the two-storey 55-unit residential building in Guelph. The amount the project was tendered for is $315,050.

Overview of the Ontario Works Division – As referenced above, committee will get an orientation about the operations of Ontario Works, which oversees social assistance programs and the provincial unemployment benefits.

2023 Ontario Works Service Plan Addendum and Agreement – Every two years, the County has to review the strategic plan for service delivery and the achievement of employment outcomes and then report back to the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services (MCCSS). This year would usually be the time to do the renewal, but a new implementation of Employment Services Transformation is coming in 2024, and the ministry has decided to just extend the old agreement for another year as they get ready to change things up in 2024. Typically, the agreement focuses on five areas including the delivery of services, improving employment outcomes, the development of local partnerships, and accountability and monitoring.

2019-2023 Ontario Works Caseload Profile – The County has done a point-in-time report about the demographic characteristics of the people collecting Ontario Works benefits. First, when federal pandemic benefits ended in November 2021, the County saw an immediate increase in applications, and the number of people receiving Ontario Works are returning to pre-pandemic levels. Other insights: there are fewer young people under 25 applying, there’s a year-over-year increase in the number of households in the program longer than five years, and the exits to employment locally are below the provincial average.

Modernization and Agreement Renewal of Dental Benefits Administration – So what does modernizing the dental benefits system mean in this case? It’s an online eligibility verification portal for people to get their benefits processed, the paper dental card from each monthly statement will be removed, and recipients will be given the option to go completely paperless for those monthly statements. Social Services needs to enter into an agreement with a company called Accerta, which will manage the new eligibility verification services.

2022 Housing and Homelessness Plan Annual Report – A lot of this is information that’s been recently discussed in various social services committee meetings, but it’s presented in one easy-to-digest package that has to be submitted to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing by June 30.

Canada-Ontario Community Housing Initiative (COCHI) Funding Update – Earlier this year, Housing Services put out a call for proposals for major capital investments; about $1.63 million was available, but the 31 projects were proposed with a cumulative price tag of almost $5 million. The tricky part is that the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing is a bit late with the funding confirmation, which further delays the County staff work on evaluating these projects over the summer months so that tenders can go out in a timely manner. Staff are asking for delegated authority so that the County CAO and the Social Services Administrator can jump right into evaluation once the MMAH confirms the funding amount.

2023 Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care System Update – On May 24, the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) System update memo was provided to the county, and it confirmed the targets for the creation of new childcare spaces under the Directed Growth Plan through 2026. In case you’ve forgotten, that’s 1,721 spaces, many of which have already been approved including all the school-based spaces and some of them have already opened. Wellington County received just over $1.5 million from the province Start-Up Grant, which was designed to increase the number of licensed childcare spaces.