A Toronto Model

No abstract available for this article.     

Living on the margins: older homeless adults in Toronto

A handful of scholars have acknowledged that, along side the traditional homeless, there are now older people who become homeless for the first time in old age. Few researchers, however, have systematically compared the recent older homeless with the chronic or traditional homeless. In the research presented here, we compare recent older homeless with long-term older homeless adults in Toronto according to their health and wealth, their housing history, and their use of health and social services. Findings indicate that people who become homeless for the first time at older ages have needs that are different from the lifetime elderly homeless and require different approaches to intervention.     

Grannies,Elders, and Friends: Aging Aboriginal Women in Toronto

Based on a research project in Toronto, Canada, this article highlights the strengths and resiliency of 12 female Aboriginal Elders and seniors as they age together. For these women, being actively involved in their families and the Aboriginal community gives them a solid grounding in who they are, what their roles are and how they contribute to the whole. Of particular significance is the support and friendship the women offer each other through their commonalities, activities, and sense of humor.     

Immigrants' Perceptions of Housing Discrimination in Toronto: The Housing New Canadians Project

The Housing New Canadians project investigated recent immigrants' perceptions of discrimination in finding rental housing since arriving in Toronto, Canada. Respondents from three immigrant communities —Jamaicans, Poles, and Somalis ά—indicated how much housing discrimination they had personally experienced and how much discrimination they perceived to have been directed toward their group. They also rated how much each of several factors, including race, income level, source of income, immigrant status, language, ethnic or national background, religion, and family size, contributed to each type of perceived discrimination. Jamaican and Somali immigrants perceived greater personal and group discrimination and also showed a greater discrepancy between personal and group discrimination than did Polish immigrants. Implications are discussed.     

Welfare to What? After Workfare in Toronto

An employment survey among people in Toronto who left Ontario Works — a classic "work-first" regime — shows clear secondary labour market status. Most interventions typical of work-first programmes did not have a positive effect on job quality: contrary to the "stepping stones" theory that poor initial jobs lead to better jobs, those who changed jobs after leaving assistance experienced poorer job quality. A shift in orientation to "sustainable employment" is required to address the employment needs of those on social assistance. Policy must also address the fact that the social assistance caseload includes a size able group that face significant barriers to employment other than education or skills.     

Diversity and Identity in the Non-profit Sector: Lessons from LGBT Organizing in Toronto

The objective of this paper is to explore the ways in which diversity is taken into account in the conceptualization, definition and role of the voluntary sector as well as policy debates around the recasting of relations between the state and the voluntary sectors. The paper is based on a study of voluntary sector organizing among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) citizens in the city of Toronto. It presents an overview of LGBT voluntary sector organizing in the city, demonstrating the rich network of non‐profit organizations that serve the LGBT community in the city of Toronto, Canada's largest city. The paper argues that the dominant cross‐national and cross‐time definitions of the voluntary sector do not account for some of the specific features of LGBT organizing and result in the marginalization of such organizing from the very concept of the voluntary sector. The paper discusses the implications of this mapping for policy discussions of the state–voluntary sector relationship. Drawing on the Canadian experience of government consultation with voluntary sector organizations, the paper demonstrates that such initiatives define certain forms of diversity in voluntary sector organizing out of the policy‐making process. Traditional policy‐making around voluntary sector issues is organized in ways that exclude urban and local identity‐based organizing.     

"A soldier in the service of his country": Dr. William Rees, professional identity, and the Toronto Temporary Asylum, 1819-1874

The first medical superintendent of the Toronto Lunatic Asylum, physician Dr. William Rees, found his tenure from 1841 to 1845 marked by financial struggle, extensive administrative conflict, and physical injury. His personality along with these events have given rise to negative portrayals of Rees as an inept administrator. Less known are his social contributions beyond his asylum work. A more extensive assessment of Rees suggests the value of his biography as a study of Upper Canadian professional and class status. While Rees's occupational endeavours before 1841 enhanced his status, negative experiences at the asylum changed this pattern and caused an ongoing decline in his social status after 1845.     

Office of Economic Opportunity: U.S.A.

The Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), was created at the height of Lyndon Johnson's “Great Society” anti-poverty programmes. It represented a degree of radical activism that reached its culmination in the 89th Congress (1965-66) and indeed has never been repeated: that Congress was perhaps the only genuinely left-liberal one this century (outside the New Deal era, at any rate). The OEO's social policies were tied to a particular theory of public and social administration: that a “rival” federal agency to the existing ones (Health, Education and Welfare, now Health and Human Services; Housing, and Urban Development, et al) could escape their conservative norms. Both at the federal level and in the “field” agencies it spanned to implement its programmes, the new approach to social administration was to by-pass traditional channels. This short, illustrative rather than definitive article, examines how such an approach was undermined by both the U.S. political structure and by traditional “politics as usual”. It is but a snapshot of the era. However, it hints at the general problems that such approaches to “by-passing” traditional agencies and attempting to develop a new autonomy in social reform may have in many countries, especially those with decentralized political structures. For, while decentralized politics provides opportunities as well as barriers to reformers seeking to by-pass traditional elites (which themselves tend to be decentralized, mirroring political structures), it is suggested here that the balance sheet will tend to be negative from the viewpoint of reformist social administration.