Kendall Worth: Community Services transformation is getting back up
Kendall Worth hears that the welfare transformation project at Community Services is starting up again, and people in his community have lots of questions.
Special Needs
Kendall Worth: Open letter to Premier Stephen McNeil offering suggestions for the many problems for income assistance recipients caused by Covid-19
Kendall Worth wrote an open letter to Premier Stephen McNeil and ministers Kelly Regan and Randy Delorey, about the many pressures people on income assistance face, and some great suggestions on what to do about it.
Kendall Worth: Keeping our eyes peeled as politicians return to Province House
Kendall Worth tackles what he hopes to see at the upcoming session of the provincial legislature. He singles out affordable housing and rent control.
Kendall Worth looks at the upcoming session of the Nova Scotia legislature
Kendall Worth on two issues he and other people on income assistance care a lot about, the bureaucratic nonsense around special diets, and the need to raise the rates to something more like a living wage.
Kendall Worth: Low vacancy rate causes rents and evictions to increase in Dartmouth North
Kendall Worth meets with Dartmouth North MLA Susan Leblanc to talk about special needs allowances and housing.
Kendall Worth: Community Services special diet nonsense is here to stay
Kendall Worth on yet another case where a caseworker doesn’t believe a doctor’s diagnosis and special diet recommendation. Keep in mind that these doctors who write the special notes have gone to school seven or more years of their lives to study to become doctors! Why do we have a system where this needs to happen?
Vince Calderhead: The income assistance transformation means worse outcomes for everybody
At last night’s screening of My Week on Welfare in Dartmouth, g=human rights lawyer Vince Calderhead talked about how the much-hyped transformation did not at all make things better for people on income assistance and his fear that special needs allowances will be next.
He also tackles the subject of tactics, don’t waste your time trying to convince bureaucrats, he says.
Always fight back when Community Services treats you unfairly!
Earlier we wrote about a woman on income assistance who lost her special needs allowance. She fought back, she made noise, and now the allowance has been reinstated. There’s a lesson in that.
Penny-pinching income assistance for people with mobility issues
We talk with an older woman on income assistance who, as a result of a cut to her special needs allowance, has lost her ability to go to medical appointments and grocery trips. But we saved the tax payer some $50 a month. This is what austerity looks like in Nova Scotia.
Lives on welfare: Mother stands up for her kid, and wins!
Kate, a fearless mother who we have written about before, fights Community Services and gets the glasses (with warranty) her autistic son requires. It was hard and scary, and it looks like questions the NS Advocate was asking made a bit of a difference. This story has a happy ending, but you can’t help but wonder how many people would just have given up much earlier.