So they're doing an assessment. With lots of involvement from "stakeholders." They are looking for stuff that is missing: areas that are preventing the consistency of support. What this particular exercise is for is to ensure that there is what we might call a constant of support: that there are no shortcomings. That the support is continuous. That the provision of support doesn't have holes in it, and that people don't fall between the cracks. (I've never understood that metaphor. *Between* the cracks are the boards that support you. People fall *through* the cracks.) (But I digress.) So this exercise is to look for missing pieces in the constant of support.
They want a centralized database of resources. They want to be able to have a database of resources that they can look up and see what resources are available for a given situation.
The thing is, they already had one. And they threw it away. The city originally asked a local club to create a directory of resources for seniors and health. The city originally supported this effort. (And it *was* an effort: approximately 800 hours of volunteer work per year, just to maintain it.) The city, over time, stopped supporting this effort. The effort was put in all by the members and volunteers of this club. The city slowly withdrew any support for this effort, neglecting the value of this particular resource. Eventually, the city tried to use it as a bit of a cash cow with the last remaining vestiges of support, and tried to make money out of the deal. The club, feeling that they were getting no support for their efforts, and putting in hundreds and hundreds of hours on the part of volunteers, stopped putting in that effort.
So now, the city authorities feel that they need a centralized database of resources. Well, you had one, and you broke it.
I had to bite my tongue to keep from pointing out that you can't fix problems with the same type of thinking, and the same processes, that created the problem in the first place.
The problem is that there are too many disparate agencies and organizations involved in the provision of care. They are concerned. Don't have what they need. Of course, there are a great, many agencies, for different needs and supports. Thus, you have fiefdoms and empire building, and turf protection over who is most important in the provision of care and support.
There are other models that can be used to address this type of issue. Some suggestions are made during the exercise can be seen as partial steps towards the continuity of support. Funding is always an issue, and so pooling of resources and a sharing of the expense of hiring a grant writer, to request money for all of the different groups and agencies is one such. Pooling administration tasks and costs is another. This is taken to possibly it's fullest extent in the Deltassist model. All the social services (and a few other supports) are provided through a one stop shop. This model has worked well for Delta For the past fifty-two years. Starting by essentially saying to the provincial government, give us the money that you would ordinarily spend on providing social services and supports within the municipality. We will provide that support. Tuned, of course, more specifically to local needs, the particular and specific needs, rather than decided by the provincial government and policies drafted to suit the lowest common denominator of the entire province.
Port Alberni needs a Deltassist. (Portassist, maybe.) It is a volunteer run organization, or body, that gets funding from the provincial government for the social services that the government would be providing anyway. Deltassist provides the services, at the same cost to the government, but is able to determine how to allocate funds to most closely meet the needs of Delta.
So, the proposed solution that the meeting comes up with is to create yet another organization to try and bring the disparate organizations together and force them to cooperate.
(Why do I even bother?)
No comments:
Post a Comment