Provincial Minister for Social Development and Poverty Reduction Sheila Malcolmson was in Campbell River on Wednesday, June 19 visiting local advocacy groups
The minister first met with Rivercity Inclusion for a tour of the Skyline Productions facility.
Malcolmson was joined by North Island MLA Michele Babchuk, and met with both Rivercity Inclusion staff and Skyline staff. Skyline’s staff work within Rivercity Inclusion’s program providing paper shredding services and creating boomboards for local forestry companies.
“Across the province were working really hard to help people with costs and also just to build stronger communities,” Malcolmson said. “We’re really trying to knit together — on the social assistance side — what can we do with the connections that we have to get people connected to good meaningful employment. When we hit that sweet spot, it’s a win-win. It’s great for employers. It’s really great for individuals. They do better and they feel better when they’ve got a really strong meaningful way to contribute to community and make friends and not be isolated.”
Rivercity Inclusion works with ministry to remove barriers to people who have been alienated from the workforce, but want to be a part of it. Malcolmson said that almost 300,000 people in B.C. are on some form of social assistance, disability or income assistance.
“We have provisions for all of them to be able to work not everybody does,” Malcolmson said. “Either they might be fearful about old rules that would be punitive if they do some work while they’re all so on income assistance, or they just face very real barriers.”
Those barriers can be things like lacking connections in the community, lacking training or even things like anger management counselling that could help them get meaningful employment.
“We’re working really hard me and Michele (Babchuk) and all of our colleagues to build up more supports for people on health and housing and addictions support and mental health counseling all those things,” she said. “It’s groups like (Rivercity Inclusion) that kind of take that next step and are able to help people connect to meaningful world and it’s a win for everybody when we do that.”
Last month, the ministry helped expand supports for vulnerable people in Vancouver’s downtown east side, as well as in Chilliwack. However, Malcolmson said those were only a few of the programs the ministry has helped with.
“We’ve got to continuous intake of funding for something called Community Employment Partnerships and there really is there’s no limits on on what we can do those programs,” she said. “Connect with your local MLA. Michele’s really good at navigating the system.”
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marc.kitteringham@campbellrivermirror.com
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