Some people on social assistance have jobs, and while you work you are entitled to keep a portion of the money you earn. However employment insurance (EI) benefits and self-employed earnings get clawed back at 100%. Kendall has long said that’s not fair, and now there is a petition you can sign and the NDP is supporting it.
A couple of ways you may get help if you have no money to pay your heating bill. It’s not enough, but it’s something.
Danny Cavanagh: “Our premiers make choices every day and its time we demand they start and make the choices to help the most vulnerable in our society. Tax cuts to the wealthy have not helped, they have created a revenue problem. It’s time to tax the wealthy so they pay their fair share. It is time to step up and help those at the bottom with real reform.”
The NSGEU and the NS College of Social Workers are raising the alarm about the state of child welfare services in Nova Scotia. Insufficient funding and increased complexity are putting pressures on the system that cannot be sustained, they warn. Parents and children will suffer as a result, and they are calling on Nova Scotians to help put a stop to that.
Kendall Worth reports how at times people on Income Assistance who have involuntary body behaviours like fidgeting or talking to themselves but are just minding their own business are being bothered by police or private security guards.”I recently learned of three people who had this happen to them in Halifax. As you will see, one of those three incidents ended up badly,” he writes.
In Ontario yearly health care costs for a food secure person are around $1600. The same costs for a person who experiences severe food insecurity are almost $4000. Almost 4% of Nova Scotia’s households experienced severe food insecurity, meaning that people missed meals, reduced food intake and at the most extreme went day(s) without food. You can’t solve our healthcare crisis while you ignore those numbers. Raise the rates and the minimum wage!
Kendall Worth to Jean-Yves Duclos, the federal Minister of Families, Children and Social Development: Hopefully your plan will go a lot better and things to eliminate poverty will move faster. People living in poverty are suffering.
Kendall Worth on the Community Services transformation project: “We understand things don’t happen overnight. However the length of time this transformation has been taking to date is concerning and frustrating to people in the community. Right now we are five years into the transformation and very few problems for people who depend on this system have gotten resolved. Why is the length of this transformation process taking so long for people to see positive results?”
Late last year I received a response to a Freedom of Information request that has all significant information greyed out. It’s a presentation about cost savings as a result of the Community Services Transformation Project. If a government initiative potentially will save money, possibly at the detriment of service levels, shouldn’t we be allowed to know how so, and how much?
Kendall Worth on poverty, social isolation and anxiety, and New Year’s resolutions. “It is a well known fact that people do not keep resolutions they make at New Year’s. However when you do keep your New Year’s Resolutions you have achieved something great in life.”