Thursday November 12th marked the one-year anniversary of the implementation of the Social Assistance Management System (SAMS).
OPSEU members working in the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), Ontario Works (OW) and Assistance for Children with Severe Disabilities (ASCD) program participated in Code Red Day, a province wide action to send a strong message to the provincial government that after one-year, SAMS is still not working.
“SAMS continues to be a major source of frustration for workers and social assistance recipients,” said OPSEU president Warren (Smokey) Thomas “OPSEU members still regularly report defects and experience program outages.”
Across the province workers wore red and signed postcards telling the Minister of Community and Social Services that frontline workers need a system that is designed for users and upholds service standards for recipients of social assistance.
“I want to thank frontline OPSEU members in the Ontario Works, Ontario Disability Support Program and the Assistance for Children with Severe Disabilities Program,” added Thomas.
“Their tireless efforts over the past year to navigate this botched computer system and minimize the harm to their clients have been nothing short of heroic.”
Related: SAMS Index Page