St Christopher House: MISWAA - Reading Materials : Reading Materials

Reading Materials

Research Agenda
On Modernizing Income Security
For Working Age Adults

The purpose of the draft research agenda is:

* To identify areas of importance for data collection and evidence-based qualitative and quantitative research for key topic areas relating to income security for low income working age adults; and

* To confirm areas of research interest on the part of members of the Working Group; either to contribute existing work or to do additional research to fill knowledge gaps.

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draft - MISWAA Research Agenda
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Modernizing Income SecurityFor Working Age Adults

Draft Profiles:

This document contains drafts profiles of five low income working age adults. They are based on real people, several of whom participated in St Christopher House’s recent work on ‘modern’ strategies for income security for working age adults. The profiles demonstrate how the complexities of our income security system and programs create significant issues for the people the system is intended to serve.

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draft- MISWAA Community Profiles
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Policy Questions Arising from the Income Security Profiles

The five profiles of low income adults prepared for the ‘modernizing income security” project illustrate the profound difficulties facing by various members of this group. In almost every case, the profiles show that without additional income earned either above or under the table, the families or individuals in the profiles cannot make ends meet when they have a significant attachment to the labour force.

The profiles tell us that the world of low wage work is tenuous and largely unrewarding. For social assistance recipients, the world that society asks them to aspire to, is one fraught with economic hardship, constant cobbling, long hours spent in public transportation and tenuous work and reliance on other family members and friends.

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draft - MISWAA Profiles Research Questions
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Employment Insurance:

Research Summary for the Task Force for Modernizing Income Security for Working Age Adults

October 6, 2005 By Jill Black and Richard Shillington

Ontarians Can No Longer Count On Employment Insurance To Provide Temporary Income Between Jobs

Employment Insurance (EI) no longer fulfils its’ role of providing temporary income support to involuntarily unemployed Canadians who are between jobs. The program coversjust over one in five unemployed people in Canada’s largest city (Toronto), and just over one in four of the unemployed in Canada’s most populous province (Ontario).

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EI Research Summary for MISWAA
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Youth Leaving Care

For children who are taken into care by child welfare (or children’s aid) agencies, the graduation to social assistance dependency is too often a reality in their adult lives. Children in care are placed in foster homes, group homes or residential treatment centres. In Ontario, youth in care are effectively expelled from care at age 18 unless they qualify for an extension of supports to age 21.

Youth in care live in the same world as other young people and are affected by the same economic forces. Studies show that young people in general are staying in the family home longer. In 2001, 58% of young Canadians aged 20-24 were living in the parental home, compared to 42% in 1981. One-quarter aged 25 to 29 were still living at home. The reasons will vary, but at least two factors are clear: the economy requires higher levels of education and young people are over represented among the unemployed and the precariously employed.

A paper commissioned by the Task Force, called Youth Leaving Care: How Do They Fare? notes that the child welfare system has acted in the capacity of family for children in care where their parents were either unavailable or could not care for them. When they “age out”, it is like being thrown out of the family home. Many of them are not ready to fend for themselves. These young people often emerge as adults with few supports and little to look forward to. If more work were done to ease the transition in these crucial years, less dependence on the adult social assistance system would be a likely result.

Youth Leaving Care - MISWAA
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This link will take you to MISWAA documents that are available at the Toronto City Summit MISWAA pages