Ontario non-profits invited to shape 'welfare-to-work' program

Author Sharlene Gandhi

Ontario non-profits, municipal governments and post-secondary educational institutions have been invited to shape research that could help those on social assistance access employment opportunities.

The Future Skills Centre has funded social research firm Blueprint to test new policy interventions that can help financially vulnerable people transition to more stable employment.

“While there are pockets of innovation and promising practices across Ontario these approaches have not scaled to reach the needed impact,” Blueprint wrote. “Even in a time of critical labour shortages, Ontario’s social assistance caseload remains steady.”

Research by Maytree on Ontario’s social assistance programs – Ontario Works, and the Ontario Disability Support Program – has found that there were 882,000 beneficiaries between 2022 and 2023, across 585,000 cases. There was an increase of 27,332 beneficiaries and 24,024 cases from the previous year.

Blueprint is specifically looking to partner with organizations that have experience providing employment support and those that have some experience participating in “evidence generation activities,” like randomized control trials.

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  • Sharlene Gandhi is the Future of Good editorial fellow on digital transformation.

    Sharlene has been reporting on responsible business, environmental sustainability and technology in the UK and Canada since 2018. She has worked with various organizations during this time, including the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business at Lancaster University, AIGA Eye on Design, Social Enterprise UK and Nature is a Human Right. Sharlene moved to Toronto in early 2023 to join the Future of Good team, where she has been reporting at the intersections of technology, data and social purpose work. Her reporting has spanned several subject areas, including AI policy, cybersecurity, ethical data collection, and technology partnerships between the private, public and third sectors.

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