From Welfare to Faring Well:Government/Community Collaboration

for Poverty Reduction

Presentation to National Forum on Welfare to WorkNovember 18, 2003

Eric Leviten-Reid

Vibrant Communities

A Pan-Canadian initiative committed to exploring comprehensive, multisectoral approaches to poverty reduction.

The Problem

• The fight to reduce poverty in Canada has stalled.

• The structure of economic opportunity has worsened over the last 20 years

• Moving people from welfare to work too often leaves them living in poverty.

Looking Beyond Welfare to Work

Create a new weave of economic and social arrangements that expands opportunities for people in poverty and provides the supports they need to realize those opportunities.

Key Elements

• Mobilizing a broad range of participants around the goal of poverty reduction.

• Revitalizing a commitment to the common good.

• Developing a new set of practical measures that can have a substantial and long-term impact on poverty.

Starting Points

• Poverty is a complex problem that no one agency or sector can tackle effectively acting on its own.

• ‘Joined up’ problems require ‘joined up’ solutions.

• Comprehensive, multisectoral approaches offer the opportunity to put the pieces together in new and better ways.

Local Action/National Supports

Participants

• 14 Community Partners

• 3 National Sponsors

• Policy Dialogue

Community Partners

• Cape Breton• Halifax• Saint John• Trois Rivières• Montréal• Regent Park • Niagara

• Waterloo Region• Winnipeg• Saskatoon• Edmonton• Calgary• Victoria• Surrey

National Sponsors

• Tamarack: An Institute for Community Engagement

• J.W. McConnell Family Foundation

• Caledon Institute of Social Policy

Policy Dialogue

• Community representatives

• Federal government departments

• Provincial and municipal governments

An Action Learning Process

Pan-Canadian Learning Community

Trail Builder Initiatives

Five Key Themes

Poverty Reduction

• Strengthen focus on reducing poverty rather than alleviating hardships of living in poverty.

• Galvanizes fresh thinking and improves outcomes.

Comprehensive Thinking and Action

• Complex problems such as poverty result from a web of interdependent factors.

• Need to tackle multiple problems simultaneously.

• Requires improved coordination and collaboration among diverse players.

New Generation of Community Work

The new synthesis rejects addressing poverty, welfare, employment, education, child development, housing and crime one at a time. It endorses the idea that the multiple and interrelated problems of poor neighbourhoods require multiple and interrelated solutions… [And] a commitment to building community institutions and social networks.

-Lisbeth Schorr, Common Purpose

Multisectoral Collaboration

• Poverty is a shared responsibility.

• Everyone has something to contribute to the poverty reduction effort.

• Involving the ‘unusual suspects’ and exploring new relationships generates creative outcomes.

Roles for Business

Financial & In-kind Contrib’n

s

Procurement Practices

Human Resource Practices

Tapping Under-served Markets

Integrated

Tradit’l

Philanthr.

Good

Contrib’n

Strategic

Philanthr.

Beyond Bottom Line

More

Powerful Contrib’n

Community Asset-Building

• Build on strengths rather than dwell on deficits.

• Acknowledge the diverse types of assets.

• Enable people to develop a critical mass of assets that maximizes their ability to escape poverty on a sustainable basis.

Community Learning and Change

• An ongoing process of dialogue, action and reflection.

• Enhanced by trusting relationships.• Involves two-way interaction among

researchers and practitioners.• Builds deeper more critical knowledge

and improves ability to act for desired change.

Lessons from the Early Days

• Development process is an integral part of the work.

• Building relationships takes time and requires a substantial and consistent investment.

• Key challenges are in balancing: comprehensive thinking and concrete action; strategic level interventions and household level outcomes.

Lessons from the Early Days

• Payoff comes from being more strategic and aligning efforts in new ways.

• Action at the local level is not enough – need to join with others to bring about systemic and policy changes.

Shifting the Emphasis in Welfare to Work

• Not just securing employment but reducing poverty.

• Neither government nor market but multisectoral collaboration.

Shifting the Emphasis in Welfare to Work

• Not single interventions but an integrated set of responses.

• Not ‘fixing’ social assistance recipients but building community capacity to generate opportunities and build assets.

Roles for Government

• Reframe the challenge from welfare to work to poverty reduction.

• Officially adopt a policy framework that supports comprehensive, multisectoral approaches.

• Help build local capacity to convene and facilitate multisectoral networks.

Roles for Government

• Reduce the government silos that inhibit local-level collaboration.

• Provide long-term stable funding that allows community initiatives to build capacity as they gain experience.

• Participate in multisectoral networks and institutionalize local and national policy dialogues on comprehensive, strategies for poverty reduction.

Roles for Government

• Reduce staff turnovers and better manage long-term relationship-building with communities.

• Enable local planning and problem-solving by making statistical data on local conditions fully available to communities.

• Review and revise policies that undermine the efforts of low-income residents to build the critical mass of assets required to exit poverty on a sustainable basis.

Roles for Government

• Adopt learning-oriented evaluations.

• Fund coaching support for communities pursuing comprehensive, multisectoral approaches to poverty reduction.

• Support cross-site learning.