Down for the Count

In the past few months, there has been an epidemic sweeping the nation called "data collectitis."

Organizations are counting people, people are counting organizations, governments are counting people, organizations are counting organizations... all in an effort to determine who is employed today who was not employed yesterday. (Although, in the case of people with disabilities, we know from this year’s "Employment Equity Report" , no matter how committed we are to counting, there just isn’t anyone there!)

These days, we are not dealing with any ordinary style of counting! Under the guise of accountability, individuals are being asked to allow personal information to be accessible to governments and to third-party evaluators. Individuals are also being asked to be available to “speak of your situation” with a number of possible professionals. The list of professionals ranges from financial aid officers to workers’ compensation staff!

The first introduction to the in-depth approach to counting came with the Contact IV formula. It seems that the Contact IV recipe has been adjusted to include also participants in programs sponsored by Opportunities Fund (OF) dollars. The cry that accompanies the counting epidemic is that only by providing names, addresses and Social Insurance Numbers (as well as a whole lot of other information) will the success of a particular venture be determined.

The data is further used to determine the cost and "savings" of assisting a person to secure a job. A sum of approximately $8,000 per person is considered money well spent. Is this true? Why could it not be $10,000 or $1,000, and is it based on the type of job a person gets and/or the salary? Is an investment of $8,000 for a person to get a full-time job as a computer programmer at $50,000 per year a better return than $1,000 to be gainfully employed as a waitress?

How do you measure the return on the investment into programs that improve an individual’s quality of life, builds self-confidence and/or enhances independent living skills?

If addressing the employment issues faced by people with disabilities was as easy to resolve as the data collection process implies, it would have been achieved years ago!

Since the 1980s, particularly with the adoption of the federal "Employment Equity Act", there has been as wide a range of approaches to employing people with disabilities as there are numbers of people. Everyone is committed to the principles of independent living, personal dignity, mutual respect and self-help. Everybody agrees that there is a connection between economic independence and personal independence.

There is a distinction, however, between economic independence and employment. For many people with a disability, being gainfully employed is not always the preferred choice, but having the responsibility to self-direct one’s income support is.

Determining the employment profile of an individual who gets a job only tells part of the story!

Perhaps if the counting and collecting of names, addresses and SINs was acknowledged as a small part of a much more complex process, it would sit more comfortably with people! Perhaps if it was stated clearly that individuals are invited to participate in a research program that follows their career paths rather than being asked to sign a consent form that may lead to involvement in a more complex analysis of their work history, they would step forward! Perhaps if the research did a comparison between similar groups of job seekers, having one that participated in an OF program and one that did not, it would be recognized that the data were used to compare success indicators for job seekers specifically.

The employment process is complex and multi-faceted. In the case of people with disabilities, it is further complicated by multiple governments, agencies and conflicting systems.

If we want to break down the barriers to the labour market for people with disabilities, we need to understand what the components of best practices are within a work environment. How do we create employment opportunities that are sustained as people come and go in the workplace? How do we eliminate the systemic and attitudinal barriers that are evident throughout the employment process? How can we move employers from being well intentioned to being committed activists?

Can we identify what changes have been made within a work site as a result of a person with a disability’s being hired? How can we ensure that an accessible work site is always accessible, regardless of who works there?

These are the questions that need to be answered, and solutions to the issues need to be implemented if we want to realize results and finally see change.

Everyone agrees that substantive evidence is more persuasive than anecdotal. It is to all of our benefit to demonstrate, in a significant way, what works, how and why it works. The challenge is to identify an effective way to accomplish this task. Collaboration between statisticians, evaluators, policy developers and program designers in addition to employers, labour and clients is essential to identify and apply the necessary tools and techniques.

An effective evaluation and assessment process must be comprehensive and recognize the human dynamic. To achieve this will not be easy or quick, but the results will be significant!

Let’s not opt for the simple countdown approach. If we do, we may find out that we end not in the winners circle, but out of the fight and down for the count!

Joan Westland is Executive Director of the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work (CCRW). For more information, contact:

THE CANADIAN COUNCIL ON REHABILITATION AND WORK

500 UNIVERSITY AVENUE, SUITE 302

TORONTO, ON M5G 1V7

TEL.: (416) 974-5575

FAX: (416) 974-5577

TTY: (416) 974-2636

E-MAIL: [email protected]

WEBSITE: a target="_blank"href="http://www.ccrw.org">http://www.ccrw.org