Announcements
Abilities Magazine
| November 16th, 2004 | |
The ForumCmcsFall 1999. Issue 40: p. 40 Forumby Thomas K. Little The message is clear. Governments will not give more money to community agencies that assist people with disabilities. Why? Because these agencies aren t making the best use of the money governments currently provide. I call this the Blame Game. Here s how it works. Politicians are elected on a promise of controlling spending. This means that no matter how compelling a case for additional funding for services to people with disabilities, they must say no. But being politicians, they must say no in a way that ensures they don t end up looking like bad guys. So they find someone else to take the heat. No one plays the Blame Game better than Ontario s ruling Conservative party. It has deployed the Blame Game in the health sector, in education, in municipal services and in income maintenance. Its reward was to be re-elected for a second five-year term. Now the Blame Game is being used to limit services for people with disabilities. Whenever the politicians are confronted with an unmet need of a particular disability group or with a problem in the current system, they identify the fault as lying, not with the amount of money spent, but with those who spend it. Responding to the Blame Game should be relatively straightforward for community agencies. But it isn t for the following reason. The Ontario government has another important agenda item beyond reducing spending. This is generally not articulated, but it involves allowing the private sector to compete for the business of providing services to people with disabilities. The government sees such involvement as the best way to ensure an affordable and efficientservice system. This second element of the Blame Game - using the game as a rationale for the entry of the private sector into the traditional domain of the non-profits - threatens the future existence of community agencies and of a tradition which goes back to the province s earliest days. In Ontario, community organizations are not just unlikely to get more money in the future. They will get less or none at all, as they are replaced by corporations. How can community organizations turn the Blame Game to their advantage? First, they need a clear understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. Non-profit groups tend to be good at responding to client needs in new and innovative ways. Examples include individualized funding, person-centered planning, the outcomes approach to service delivery, the philosophy of community involvement and inclusion, and service models like supported employment. Non-profits provide a low cost service. A recent study set the average salary for all staff at just $29,000 per year. Virtually all spending by non-profits (94 per cent according to the same study) goes directly to client services. But non-profits are poor at a number of things,including planning, costing, and marketing their services. Secondly, they need to reinvent themselves as non-profit agencies which operate like their for-profit colleagues. This involves building on their strengths and offsetting their weaknesses as follows: BECOMING MARKET DRIVEN - to identify their customer groups. These groups include individuals with disabilities, their families, government and the private sector (for vocational rehabilitation) - to identify the services they offer and treating these services as products - to look for new services to offer and ways to improve the existing ones - to expand their clientele beyond the specific disability group they served in the past - to develop a system for pricing and costing these services - to create a business plan IMPLEMENTING A COSTING SYSTEM SO THEY: - know how much they spend on their services - know how much they earn from their services - make decisions about the service mix which provide them with the maximum in financial return - seek out partnerships and joint ventures with other non-profits Thirdly, they need to engage in a political exercise to sell the merits of the non-profit sector to a skeptical political audience. While most agencies are reluctant to enter this particular arena, they jeopardize the future of the sector by not being proactive in making the case for their survival. Be forewarned - there will be pain involved in these changes. Not everyone in social services will be comfortable operating in a quasi-business milieu. Those people will fall by the wayside. But engaging in pain avoidance would be a mistake. Ontario is playing the Blame Game right now with rehabilitation organizations. It has already done so in long-term care. Next on the horizon? Phase Two of the Making Services Work for People initiative for children and for adults with developmental disabilities, where hundreds of millions of services are at stake. Get ready to compete. The survival of your organization will depend on it Tom Little is the president of CMCS. CMCS is available to help you win at the Blame Game. Contact us at 10 Milner Business Ct., Suite 208, Scarborough, ON, M1B 3C6; Tel:(416) 297- 6497. Email: [email protected]; Website: www.cmcs.on.ca
| |
