Social Services Sector Forum Report
The Social Sector Forum brought together 135 representatives from across the province to Richmond on November 15, 2019. This report of the day's proceedings was released earlier this week and it provides an overview of panel discussions, addresses by the Honourable Shane Simpson, Minister Responsible for Social Development and Poverty Reduction, as Chair of the Roundtable, and the table topic discussions.
Topics discussed that day are similar to what we've been hearing through our ASPECT member regional meetings and also where ASPECT has been focusing our advocacy work over the recent years. Here are some of the top issues:
- Staff recruitment and retention and the difficulty for the social care sector to compete with government and institutions.
- Regional complexity of delivering services in rural and remote communities.
- Collaboration with Indigenous organizations to deliver services.
- Building capacity to make collaborative engagement sustainable.
- Issues related to procurement and contracting.
- Sector compensation.
- Sector structure and addressing the Minister's comment that "maybe there are too many service providers."
In follow up to this day, ASPECT will be attending a Community Social Services Sector Reference Resource Group (CSSSRRG) Meeting in March where these and more issues will be discussed on your behalf. To quote Minister Simpson from page 6 of the report:
"Government is a part of the sector, not apart from it. We need to develop a relationship that is mature, interactive, based on goodwill."
Read the report.
Reports Page on the ASPECT Website
At this week's ASPECT member regional meetings, we received a great suggestion: why not have a place to link to all of the sector reports and articles? Although we release reports in Aspectives, if you missed the week a report was released, then you may miss it completely. As a result, we've now created a Sector Reports & Articles page for you to visit to catch up. We've included articles that have a research component behind them rather than just news media stories. If you see a report that your employment colleagues should know about, please send us the link to include on our webpage.
Correction
Last week we mistakenly passed on kudos to Catherine Poole and her staff for their work on the Labour Market Information Report. It was actually Chris Johnson, Executive Director of Labour Market Insights, Evaluation and Outreach, and her team who are responsible. Chris has promised me a photo of her team for a future issue of Aspectives so that you can see the people behind this very important work.
