Big Brother puts electronic monitors on Ontario social workers

Private consultant tightens belt on social services and the people who depend on them

By: Pat Daley

  Staff in Ontario's Disability Support Program (ODSP) will have their movements monitored electronically six times an hour for the next 16 weeks. Management says will help improve business practices, but staff believe the move is designed to cut jobs - and line the pockets of the giant multinational Andersen Consulting.
  Last week, staff in the Mississauga ODSP office were handed gadgets that income support specialist Louise Raymond says look like an palm-sized electronic organizer or a television remote control. Workers are to keep the gadgets with them at all times. When it beeps - randomly, six times an hour - the worker is supposed to enter a code for the activity in which he or she is engaged at the time. This is going to go on for 16 weeks.
 

There are only two ways to make money out of the welfare system. You can reduce the number of people receiving assistance or reduce the number of people delivering it.

  As it happens, Raymond is also a rep for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU). It wasn't long before a grievance was in the works. She says, "Management keeps assuring us that it will lead to better business practices. We know it will lead to job loss down the road."
  So where does the multinational Andersen Consulting - with tens of thousands of employees and billions in annual revenue - come into it? A few years ago, Ontario started overhauling its welfare system. The old system was divided into two new programs: Ontario Works, which includes mandatory workfare and is now run by municipalities, and the Ontario Disability Support Program, run provincially to provide income and employment supports to people with disabilities.
  The government contracted Andersen Consulting using a new type of procedure. Andersen was to invest in computer systems, primarily, and make money back by taking a share of savings gained through this Business Transformation Project. The contract gave Andersen the potential to earn $180 million over five years.
  Social service advocates point out that there are really only two ways to make money out of the welfare system. You can reduce the number of people receiving assistance or reduce the number of people delivering assistance.
 

If the workers are stressed by all of this, the real sufferers are the clients

  OPSEU members are fear the new time management gadgets are part of a plan to reduce the number of workers. They may have reason to feel that way. One of the legacies of Andersen's overhaul of New Brunswick's social assistance system is a requirement that workers spend no more than 4.5 minutes with each client every month, according to the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). New Brunswick also lost one-quarter of its social assistance workers.
  Job loss has already happened in Ontario's system. Four hundred positions were lost in the switchover to the new system, says Bob Eaton, OPSEU chair of the employees-employer council in the ministry of community and social services. Both Eaton and Raymond say the new ODSP was set up with no training for managers or staff. To make matters worse, they moved at the same time from the traditional individual case manager system to a team concept.
  If the workers are stressed by all of this, the real sufferers are the clients, says Raymond. They're not being seen as much and they're complaining about customer service because, with the team system, they may get a different worker every time they call. That means telling their stories all over again.
  Some of these concerns are echoed by agencies that have traditionally provided employment training programs and supports to people with disabilities. In February, 15 Toronto-based agencies - such as March of Dimes, Goodwill, and Jewish Vocational Service (JVS) - submitted a report called "Making It Work" to the ministry.
  Karen Goldenberg of JVS says once ODSP started the agencies were getting fewer clients for employment services even though the ministry was telling them it's seeing more people than ever. (Despite the ministry's claim, Bob Eaton says ODSP employment supports are set up for only five per cent of the client population.) The system needs a major communications strategy to let people know who's eligible, she says. Goldenberg is optimistic that changes will be made because the ministry - and the minister's office - appear eager to respond to the report.
  Bob Eaton says the ministry is also responding to concerns OPSEU has raised. It's just doing it the wrong way. Rather than equipping workers with time management monitors, he says, the ministry should be sitting down and listening to what the real problems are.
  "We're asking for accountability," he says. "We want to have an identifiable case manager for each client." That would mean more staff, who are needed for another reason. Linda Raymond says there is nobody in her office under the age of 40. They need to start bringing in younger people who can learn the system before current staff start to retire.
  OPSEU would also like the ministry to rethink another Andersen scheme for getting rid of workers. IVR or Integrated Voice Response allows clients to report address changes, earnings, or other information through the telephone key pad. Eaton says the system won't work for the vulnerable population served by ODSP.
  "This is social services," says Eaton. "People don't want to talk to a machine. It's not a bank."
  Andersen can be forgiven for getting the two mixed up. In 1998, the provincial auditor reported that the company was billing an average of six times more than it would have cost for comparable ministry staff to do the work and charging an average of about $26,000 per full-time equivalent for out-of-pocket expenses in the first year of the contract.
  Meanwhile, Raymond and her co-workers in Mississauga - and eventually throughout the province - will be reporting six times an hour on how they're spending their time.

Pat Daley is a freelance writer and editor in Athlone in Simcoe County, Ontario.

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