Developmental Services: Ontario Walks for Dignity

Developmental services workers stage Dignity Walks across the province

On Tuesday, May 27, frontline workers across the province are delivering the message that politicians cannot afford to ignore the crisis in developmental services.

The recent All-Party Select Committee on Developmental Services openly acknowledged the extent of this sector’s crisis in their March 2014 interim report. This committee has a mandate “to develop recommendations on a comprehensive developmental services strategy to address the needs of children, youth and adults in Ontario with an intellectual disability or who are dually diagnosed with an intellectual disability and a mental illness”.

The Ontario Ombudsman, André Marin, reported that we are failing Ontario families. The number of complaints regarding access to quality developmental services has skyrocketed to well over 800 in 2013-14.

Ontario reached a new low on May 20, 2014, with yet another parent taking the desperate action of threatening to abandon their adult child, this time at Ontario Deputy Minister of Community and Social Services Marg Rappolt’s office.

The 10,000 OPSEU members who work in developmental services believe that can afford to care for the most vulnerable, because dignity should not be optional in Ontario.

They are asking politicians to commit to immediate sustainable long term funding to end the shameful crisis in developmental services, funding that strengthens the not-for-profit community agencies that provide quality, professional, planned, and stable services.

The province has seen the growth of a waitlist for services exceeding 20,000, a devalued workforce that is two thirds part-time and workers are often employed at rates just above the minimum wage with a chronic turnover rate.

Join us. Walk for dignity on May 27.