Something is not amiss in Alberta
The thing about budgets is that while everyone is calling for less spending, they don’t mean on themselves. Everyone would like to think that they are personally crucial to the wellbeing of the system. Everyone, it seems, is entitled to more cash/security/days off due to their hard work, no matter how much above the national average they are paid, or in the case of the loudest, most powerfully and organized professions, how much above absolutely all other provincial counterparts they are paid. It’s as if everyone is under the impression that everyone else gets raises; that no one else takes work home; that no one else has overhead or a skill they invested time and money achieving. Everyone else, you see, has job security and pensions, and the Internet hasn’t eliminated half their positions. Then, there’s the united and utterly ridiculous battle cry: that billions can be parsed from politicians’ lunch money and cutting a few executive assistants.
Of course, everyone claims that calamity will ensue, and the hard costs down the road will be astronomically and exponentially larger if their budgets are cut, or even if they stay the same. There will probably be deaths involved. Opposition parties offer the government not a glimmer of redemption, reflection or anything other than allout knee-jerk rejection. For all practical purposes, this renders them meaningless. Columnists, including me, launch attacks on government departments not getting it right, as if they’re pillaging the serfs to pay for orgies and gold-plated taps. It’s enough to make a citizen flatline with skepticism, or worse, stop voting or being engaged in a system they feel is being done to them, not with them, and certainly not for them. The accumulation of this gloomy rhetoric is dangerous. Quick, everybody: stop, drop and roll.
All this is to say that it’s equally, if not more important to talk about what’s good, what’s working, where we have some success. Attendees of the recently held summit by the Calgary Homeless Foundation may have expected more of the societal sea of woe-is-me, but there was instead, an almost unimaginable surprise. As it turns out, nationwide, and even worldwide, when it comes to keeping people off the street, Alberta kicks butt. Since the province launched a 10-year plan to end homelessness in 2008, the four year point-in-time numbers are in, and are so far, very good. This formal partnership is the first of its kind in the country, and involves 400 Alberta organizations, including the provincial government, municipal leaders, non-profit agencies and a generous private sector.
While social scrooges call for a future that includes detailed, evidence- and results-based expenditures, Alberta is quietly way ahead of the game. It’s implemented an online data recording process called HIMS (Homeless Management Information System) — also a national first — that tracks usage. This is how they know that the Housing First program, which mandates that no one should be in a shelter or homeless for more than 21 days, is well on its way to achieving the lofty 10-year goal. It’s how they know that among more than 6,000 people who have been helped in crisis situations, an astounding 80 per cent remain in stable housing three years later; approximately 1,600 people have left the program altogether, more self-sufficient, back on their feet. It’s how they know that among this population, EMS interactions are down by 72 per cent with ER visits reduced by 69 per cent; scuffles with police are down by 66 per cent, days in jail by 88 per cent, and court appearances have dropped by 69 per cent.
Kudos to Dr. John Rook, who heads the Calgary Homeless Foundation. Kudos to the Alberta Works (government!) Outreach Team, and all other recipients of the Arthur R. Smith award. Kudos to Burnet, Duckworth & Palmer law firm (and all others) from the “privates” who step in with cash. And in case you missed it, last week was National Social Work Week. These 5,000 Alberta front-line workers are the people who see the worst of it so you don’t have to. If you know one, hug them for a hard job actually well done.