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Ontario social services overhaul hurts young job seekers, report warns

In pre-COVID times, First Work's Aspire initiative brought young people, employers and service providers together to consider early career opportunities. Photo supplied by First Work

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The overhaul of Ontario's social services model is taking away much-needed support from vulnerable young job seekers as the pandemic continues to pose additional setbacks for youth employment, a new report warns.

In mid-2019, the Ford government decided to revamp the province's model for delivering social assistance and employment supports, shifting responsibility for these programs to the Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development and cutting the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services out of the delivery process. The Ford government also introduced performance-based funding as part of the change, rewarding agencies that connect workers to long-term jobs, but one program was lost in the transition: the Youth Job Connection (YJC) program.

The removal of this specific support for youth — who are more likely than the average worker to lack experience, soft skills or emotion management — pushes them into a daunting adult system unable to connect them to meaningful work, according to a new report from the First Work advocacy network for youth employment service providers.

“While the government has announced great initiatives for young people, they are missing the mark when it comes to youth most in need of support,” said Akosua Alagaratnam, First Work's executive director.

The YJC program enabled employment service providers to reach out to students at risk of leaving school without a job or training lined up, funded incentives for companies to hire young people and allowed for youth-only cohorts to take part in pre-employment training. It was designed to provide the most support to those considered furthest from a job, and First Work says school boards and employers are already noticing the gaps.

The overhaul of Ontario's social services model is taking away much-needed support from vulnerable young job seekers as the pandemic continues to pose additional setbacks for youth employment, a new report warns. #onpoli

“The loss of the YJC program — intended to serve those young people facing multiple barriers — without substitution will affect those already furthest removed from the employment spectrum,” Alagaratnam added, referring to a range of challenges that could include mental health, disability status, housing and a lack of experience or training.

Young people in general have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic: they tend to feature heavily in retail, hospitality and other customer-facing jobs that have come and gone with waves of COVID-19 restrictions, adding to an already tough labour market for youth.

This combination of policy shift and economic disruption “may produce multiple scarring effects such as subsequent higher levels of unemployment, lower pay in the long-term and reduced work opportunities for youth, as well as stagnate the growth of Ontario’s incoming workforce,” according to the report, shared with Canada’s National Observer Tuesday.

For now, the overhaul to Ontario's social services model is playing out in three test regions: Peel Region in the Greater Toronto Area, which serves as an urban example of the revamped system; Muskoka-Kawarthas as a rural version; and Niagara-Hamilton for a mix of the two demographics. All three have had the new system in place for a year so far, and Ontario is planning to expand its revamped social services model across the rest of the province in two phases.

The office of Monte McNaughton, minister of labour, training and skills development, was unable to reply in time for a short deadline.

Morgan Sharp / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer

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