February 2008

Welcome

Welcome to the new electronic version of the Indicator newsletter. Your comments and feedback are welcome: please email info@communitycouncil.ca. A limited number of paper copies are available. Call or email to receive the newsletter by mail.

Leadership and Transition at the Community Council

After 14 years of hard work and dedication, Mabel Jean Rawlins officially retired from the Community Council at the end of December 2007. The impact of Mabel Jean’s leadership, vision and commitment will be felt for years to come.

Mabel Jean’s extraordinary leadership has recently been recognized through a Victoria Community Leadership Award. Mabel Jean was recognized for her exemplary leadership in community service that demonstrates the highest standards of personal integrity and ethical behaviour.

Christina Peacock, Mabel Jean Rawlins and Maureen Young at the Victoria Leadership Awards

Additionally, on February 1st, the First Unitarian Church of Victoria honoured Mabel Jean as the inaugural recipient of their "Unsung Hero" Award. An unsung hero is a skilled, dedicated and diligent person who has served the larger community long and well but has never won the headlines. Recipients are chosen because they reflect in their lives the seven principles which guide the Unitarian-Universalist movement.

The Community Council has grown and flourished under Mabel Jean’s leadership and has positioned itself both locally and nationally as a leader amongst social planning organizations across the country. It is respected for the relevance and quality of its community-based research, and for providing a range of research, communications and collaboration services within BC’s Capital Region.

Shared collaborative leadership has been a hallmark of the Community Council, and a quality that Mabel Jean strived for throughout her career. The Board in consultation with staff has decided to proceed in a thoughtful and considered approach to find Mabel Jean’s replacement. A transition plan including some recruitment timelines has been developed in order to provide an opportunity to determine the requisite skill and experience requirements prior to the posting of the new Executive Director position.

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Quality of Life CHALLENGE - Strategic Community Plan

The Quality of Life CHALLENGE's vision is for a vibrant and sustainable region where everyone lives in a safe and decent home, able to care for themselves, their families and their community. Quality of Life CHALLENGE partners are working together to generate long-lasting solutions that prevent and reduce poverty in BC’s Capital Region by focusing on three strategic areas: increasing sustainable incomes, reducing costs of living, and creating learning opportunities.
Read more... (pdf)

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Relevant and Reliable Research Reports

Part of the business of the Community Council is to conduct community based research on social issues. The Community Council seeks to do research which engages those impacted; leads to practical and effective actions; is responsive to emerging community issues; emphasizes qualitative neighbourhood level data and uses it to enrich quantitative data; is proactive, innovative, current and relevant; and is communicated in meaningful and accessible ways.

Recent Community Council Research Reports

Early Years Report Series

• The Peninsula Early Years Report
• The Southern Gulf Islands Early Years Report
• The Saanich Early Years Report
• The Victoria Early Years Report
• The Oak Bay Early Years Report
• The Western Communities Early Years Report
• The Esquimalt-View Royal Early Years Report

Click here to read these reports on the Community Council website.

Labour Market Dialogues Discussion Papers

• Advertising and hiring
• Child care
• Employing people with past or current problematic substance use
• Immigration and employment
• Literacy in the workplace
• Mentoring in the workplace
• Scheduling flexibility
• Sex workers in transition
• Transition to work

Click here to read these papers on the Community Council website.

Reports for the United Way of Greater Victoria

• Family and Community Well-Being Social Infrastructure Assessment Survey Results
• Housing Low-Income People in BC's Capital Region
• Mental Health and Addictions in Greater Victoria: Results of Key Informant Interviews

Available upon request from the Community Council

Coming Soon: Upcoming Community Council Research Reports

• What are Women Saying: Homeless and Unstably Housed Women in Victoria's Capital Region (Report for the Victoria Real Estate Board)
• Addiction, Recovery and the Workplace: An Employer Information Guide

These reports and more can be found at www.communitycouncil.ca/resources.php

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Communicating Reliable Information... Electronically

Did you know that electronic newsletters have been developed related to local employers who are making a difference to their employees through their HR practices, food security in BC’s Capital Region, and the work of family serving agencies? Anyone can subscribe at no charge.

The employer CHALLENGE newsletter featuring a case study of a local employer, HR tips, and relevant links is distributed monthly to over 1,400 employers.

Making Food Matter, a quarterly publication of CR-FAIR, provides current information on the regional food system, community stories, resources and upcoming events is distributed to 400 readers.

AFSA News a quarterly newsletter including relevant articles, agency announcements and links, and upcoming events is sent to more than 300 people.

Find out more. Go to www.communitycouncil.ca under Activities or www.qolchallenge.ca under News and Events.

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A Case Study on Housing Affordability

The Housing Affordability Partnership (HAP) is a unique public-private–not for profit group working together to address housing affordability concerns and raise awareness of emerging housing issues and opportunities in BC's Capital Region.

HAP has recently published a case study on FairWay Woods, a housing development that provides supportive and affordable housing for aging individuals who were homeless or at risk of homelessness.

Click here to read the case study.

Visit the HAP website at www.housingaffordability.ca to learn more.

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Attention Capital Region Employers: An Update on the Labour Market Dialogues

Escape the HR Crunch

Attracting and retaining employees in this job-seeker's market is no easy task. Thankfully, there's an effective solution that also benefits the community - hiring people with barriers to employment.

Many employers want to adopt policies to accommodate people with a variety of barriers, but don't know where to start. That's why the team here at the Community Council introduced the Labour Market Dialogues project.

Expert Advice

Recently, 30 employers, service providers, and members of the community, including people with barriers to employment, spent time together to discuss the kind of changes employers could make, and what kind would have the largest positive influence on their organizations and communities alike.

Responding individually and in small groups, participants weighed and evaluated at least nine possible topics described in discussion papers that share information on how employers can be supported to hire and retain people with various barriers to employment. Then working together, all 30 people reached a consensus, naming two topics with immense potential to benefit both employers and employees - helping employers support people transition to employment and offering flexible schedules.

Why Those Topics?

Transition and scheduling are broad topics that can incorporate other beneficial HR practices, like thoughtful advertising and hiring, and childcare, a pressing concern and challenge for many young families.

Transition policies help people with barriers to employment enter the workplace. Establishing personalized schedules and being flexible with staff is a simple and cost effective way to help those employees stay and succeed.

Participants recognized that the generous scope of the chosen topics could be a challenge. But, above all, they saw the opportunity - the chance to benefit a large number of employers and employees, creating a stable, satisfied workforce and stronger communities.

Engaging Employers

Once the two topics were selected, the LMD team proceeded to put together information materials, tips and resources for employers about flexibility in schedule and transition supports, to be distributed among local employers. (Click here to view the quick reference card containing this information).

Eight different methods were used to reach employers in December 2007 and early January 2008, including: email communication, group presentations, media release, networking events, one-on-one interviews, distributing paper information materials through Canada Post (unaddressed admail to 182 employers) and distributing paper information in person to businesses directly. An evaluation form accompanied the information materials and 40 employers returned the evaluation, nine of which were new to the LMD project.

The preliminary results of the evaluation show that most of the respondents thought that they could use the ideas and other resources shared with them by the LMD team (86% of respondents). Employers also expressed interest in several practices, such as: learning more about hiring and recruiting practices (73% of respondents), and retaining employees (58% of respondents).

A complete report on the evaluation of the employer engagement methods will be available soon. This information will be very useful for the design of the next stage of the project, planned for March 2008.

The Labour Market Dialogues is a project to explore how employers in BC’s Capital Region could be better supported to hire and retain people experiencing barriers to paid employment. Currently, the project collects and shares successful practices of employers that are attracting and keeping employees through creative scheduling and offering opportunities to people in various stages of worklife.

Vancity Credit Union has contributed funds to this project. The Government of Canada has contributed funding to this initiative.

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The Early Years Reports Series for BC's Capital Region

Research tells us that sufficient public investment in children in their early years (under the age of six), will not only create healthier children, but it can actually create a significant long term financial return for communities as much as three to seven dollars on each dollar invested (Anderson 2007, CED 2006, Shaffer 2005). In BC, $7,600 is invested per child by the Ministry of Education, however, only $650 per child (figure does not include capital costs) is invested in children under the age of six (Anderson 2007). In fact, Canada has the lowest public expenditure per capita compared with 13 other OECD countries, including the United States and the UK.

What do we know about the health and development of the young children who live in this region? Where are the opportunities to further improve their outcomes later in life, and increase the quality of life in our communities?

The Early Years Report Series for BC’s Capital Region represents seven individual reports (The Peninsula, Western Communities, Esquimalt-View Royal, Victoria, Saanich, Oak Bay and the Southern Gulf Islands), providing baseline information specific to young children and their families. Each report provides municipal level information on the number and distribution of children aged five and under, the programs and services available for young children and families, child care data, child development outcomes from the 2006 Early Development Instrument, and other relevant census data.

The information identified in these reports is useful in many ways as it:

• increases knowledge and awareness of young children when planning and decision making
• identifies areas where services and programs are not available
• identifies the location of child care, and the discrepancies between the number of young children, particularly infants, and the number of child care spaces
• identifies developmental areas (including physical, social, emotional, language, cognitive) which indicate strengths and weaknesses in children’s development.

The reports are available on the Partnership in Learning
and Advocacy for Young Children (PLAY) website, or the UEY portion of the Community Council website.

The reports are funded by Human Resources and Social Development Canada under the Understanding the Early Years Initiative.

Population of Children Aged Five and Under:

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The Health of the Non-Profit Sector -
Is this sector at risk?

Tim Brodhead, President & CEO, J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, spoke at a November 2007 luncheon presented by the Association of Family Serving Agencies (AFSA).

In answer to the question, “how healthy is the non-profit sector?” Tim Brodhead responds that “we’re not doing well.” In the midst of the many signs of wealth—a growing economy and labour shortage—we remain disconnected from the poverty around us.

Unlike other sectors such as manufacturing, the non-profit sector is largely overlooked and unappreciated. Canada has the second largest non-profit sector after Holland. It employees 1.5 million workers and is responsible for 8.5 % of Canada’s gross domestic product. Nonetheless, the sector is often seen as residual at best.

Mr. Brodhead spoke to three indicators of non-profit sector health:

1. Financial: When universities and hospitals are excluded, non-profit organizations generate 75 billion in revenue per year; 45% through membership, 40% through government (mostly provincial), and 12% in donations. This revenue is unevenly distributed and while individuals are donating larger sums, the number of donors is decreasing. Overall, the financial picture is mixed and is not healthy.
2. Staffing: It is increasingly difficult to encourage people to work in this sector. There is however, much that we can do. Mr. Brodhead suggests organizational and succession planning, encouraging existing leaders to stay involved, management training and diversifying the workforce as some steps that we can take. He encouraged attendees to remember that “people don’t just want to make a living they want to make a difference.”
3. Leadership: If an American survey is adjusted to the Canadian context, Mr. Brodhead suggested that 65,000 non-profit leaders will retire in the next decade. It is imperative that the sector deal with challenges that to date we have largely overlooked.

What do we need to create a healthy non-profit sector? Money, often the default answer, is not the only issue. Mr. Brodhead is convinced that as a sector, we are not telling our story well. Our voices are disparate, our contribution undervalued and our needs not clearly defined. This leads to self marginalization and it makes it difficult for the public and politicians to champion the sector.

Mr. Brodhead suggests we follow the example of the United Kingdom. The UK has a national policy framework and an office of the third sector with representatives in all of the central organs of government. Also, people and governments rightly want evidence of effectiveness. We need to embrace and refine evaluation methods that measure what is important. It is no longer permissible for agencies to assume that they are effective solely because the work they do is valuable.

Panelists Jennifer Charlesworth, Federation of Families, and Sandra Richardson, the Victoria Foundation, re-affirmed the themes of articulating the relevance of the non-profit sector in the global economy, sharing our stories strategically and consistently, and the emerging challenges in leadership within the sector with an aging demographic and a competitive labour market. Panelist Mark Medgyesi of the Ministry of Public Safety shared information on the strategic initiative underway between the provincial government and the non-profit sector to explore ways we work together, service delivery procurement and sustaining the capacity of this sector.

So, while it’s clear that the sector is not thriving, we are not powerless to affect change. Recognizing and communicating our contribution to the Canadian economy and quality of life, promoting a national policy framework and effective evaluation are just as important as money to make the sector well.

This article appeared in the December issue of "AFSA news".

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Volunteer Profile: Ted Humphreys

“Retirement” as Ted Humphreys demonstrates is an opportunity to bring knowledge, wisdom and vision to issues and work you care deeply about. Moving to Vancouver Island with his wife Ruth after a full career in the field of education, Ted is as busy as he has ever been. The Unitarian Church, of which Ted is a member, has consistently been a source of great Community Council Board members. Ted joined the Board of the Community Council in 2004. An outstanding legacy is a strengthened HR Policy and the initiation of a pension plan for Community Council staff. As chair of the First Unitarian Church of Victoria’s Social Justice Committee, Ted has, among many things, championed the “Unsung Heroes” recognition and fundraising event. His generosity, openness and commitment are an inspiration to all.

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"Blue Linnet"

Click the above image to view a larger version of the print (pdf).

Fundraising Auction

Local artist Wendy Picken has generously donated some of her beautiful art to the Community Council to support fundraising activities. She describes her work as "finger painting without the paint." Wendy's images are inspired from dreams, her flower garden, still life, children and love - "When my children were younger, 'still life' took on a new meaning in my art - a reminder to embrace the present. The perfection of cut flowers soon fades. I couldn't put off trying to capture their beauty with my crayons."

This has helped Wendy to create still life drawings which come alive - vibrant flowers and fruit sharing the paper with her tiny yellow birds which seem to be caught dream flying, trusting their heart and wings.

This framed print, "Blue Linnet", is available through a silent auction. The closing date for bids is March 16, 2008. To send in a bid, email info@communitycouncil.ca and put "Wendy Picken" in the subject line. As this is a fundraiser, please note the minimum bid is $300.

"Blue Linnet" is hanging in the Community Council office for viewing. Let the bidding begin!!

Click here to view Wendy Picken's website.

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