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Addressing Accessibility to Higher Education for Lone Mothers in BC and The Poverty Reduction Strategy Act
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Addressing Accessibility to Higher Education for Lone Mothers in BC and The Poverty Reduction Strategy Act
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Addressing Accessibility to Higher Education for Lone Mothers in BC and The Poverty Reduction Strategy Act
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The transcription is about the British Columbia Poverty Reduction Strategy Act and its failure to address the accessibility of higher education for lone mothers. It discusses the definition of poverty, risk factors of poverty, the feminization of poverty, and the high child poverty rate among single parent-led families. It also explores the concepts of oppression, social inequality, and violence, as well as the impact of neoliberal education systems. The role of education as a determinant of health and the transfer of material disadvantages from parents to children are highlighted. The history of poverty measures and social assistance programs in Canada is discussed, along with the implementation of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Act in British Columbia. However, the act does not specifically target single mothers or address their unique challenges. The Single Parent Employment Initiative is mentioned as a program that supports single parents on income assistance, but its eligibility r 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 Hi friends, Dawn Cuso here, Social Work student at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC. This will be my first ever podcast as a result of an assignment in Social Work 3000, Canadian Social Policy. Focusing on the British Columbia Poverty Reduction Strategy Act, the goal is to address accessibility of higher education for lone mothers in BC as a means of tackling the province's poverty rate. Through the Canadian Association of Social Workers, CASW, Code of Ethics Value 1, Respect for Inherent Worth and Dignity of All Persons, investigation highlights the failure of the PRS Act to recognize and respect the diversity or take into account the breadth of differences amongst lone mothers and their unique challenges, as well as the vital role they play in breaking the cycle of poverty. The following research explores why this is so and what should be done about it. There is no official universal definition of poverty, although it is most often associated with financial income and security. In Canada, the term has evolved to include not only one's financial situation, but also their personal experience of being poor. An example provided by Chappell tells us that many people equate poverty with social exclusion. That is, poverty exists when a person is unable or is denied the opportunity to fully engage in the economic, cultural, social, and political realms of society or meet society's expectations in terms of roles, relationships, and participation. Risk factors of poverty, as explained by Chappell, are conditions or circumstances that make some groups more susceptible to poverty than others. Research shows us that women and single parents are among those who are at a particularly high risk of poverty. Chappell highlights that the term feminization of poverty calls attention to the fact that women are more likely than men to be poor, regardless of their age, family status, ethnicity, or other characteristics. Living in a single parent, female-led family raises the risk of poverty for children. The Taiyi reports findings from the 2021 First Call Child Poverty Report card stating that single parent-led families have the highest poverty levels among families with children in BC with a 49% child poverty rate. 80% of all single parent families in BC are led by women and the median annual income for all female-led single families was about 70% of what the median single father income was in 2019. These numbers begin to paint the picture that BC's child poverty problem is actually a women's poverty problem. It is important to define a few other key concepts as they greatly contribute to the state of our societal well-being. In society there are dominant groups, those who hold power and privilege, and there are those who the dominant groups have power over, the subordinate, also referred to as marginalized or oppressed. Oppression plays out at the personal, cultural, and structural levels. Muali and West teach us that one of the many aspects of oppression is institutional conditions that inhibit or prevent people from becoming full participants in society. At the structural level, there is evidence that oppressed groups experience higher rates and more severe forms of illness and higher incidences of premature morbidity than the dominant group does. Muali and West point out that this is in large part due to the socially sanctioned ways that social institutions, laws, social policies, and social practices all work together to benefit the dominant group at the expense of the subordinate groups. Social inequality is a form of social terrorism perpetuated by privileged groups on subordinate groups at the structural level of society. Rather than social equality and equal opportunity being of central importance in democratic societies, widespread institutional or structural oppression affects all the major areas of an individual's life. Employment, housing, health, education, and financial opportunities. Violence is any relation, process, or condition by which an individual or group violates the physical, social, and or psychological integrity of another person or group. From this perspective, Muali and West point out that violence negatively affects human growth and development, interferes with the inherent potential of individuals, limits productive living, and causes death. The social processes, relations, and practices associated with social inequities often span generations. They are deeply ingrained in people and dominate everyday living. Subordinate groups generally will suffer directly from inadequate employment, low income, poverty, and lack of educational opportunities. The rate of violence against women is disturbingly high in Canada on a personal and structural level. Discrimination against women has been documented in the workplace with respect to wages, occupational segregation, training, and pensions. This discrimination is an example of structural oppression, which of course makes women more vulnerable to structural violence. Interestingly, Hager and colleagues highlight that neoliberal education systems enforce and reinforce existing hostilities, inequalities, and injustices. Neoliberalism, grounded in logics of globalization, marketization, and individualization, has penetrated many areas of public life as well as public institutions. As such, higher education is no longer governed according by the norms and values of the public good, and instead, it's managed and regulated according to the principles of a market economy. Hager and colleagues explain that with such circumstances, hierarchical divisions and societal, national, ethnic, class, and gender disparities are reinforced, and values such as social justice, equality, anti-racism, and care for others, as well as collective mutual learning, are almost impossible to maintain. Analyzing this phenomenon through the Social Determinants of Health Index, we learn from Friedman that health disparities are avoidable differences that disproportionately impact certain groups. Health equity demands attention to social determinants of health. Canada defines determinants of health as the broad range of personal, social, economic, and environmental factors that determine individual and population health. Listed by Canada are 12 main determinants of health. For the purpose of this research, however, the focus is on education and literacy, as well as childhood experiences. Social determinants of health, as defined by Canada, refer to a specific group of social and economic factors within the broader determinants of health. These relate to an individual's place in society, such as income, education, or employment, as well as experiences of discrimination. The Lancet Public Health tells us that education, health, and well-being are intrinsically linked. The evidence behind the importance of education as a determinant of health is amongst the most compelling. Education is strongly associated with life expectancy, morbidity, and health behaviours. Educational attainment plays an important role in health by shaping opportunities, employment, and income. While exploring the determinants of escaping poverty through education, Duarte and colleagues find clear evidence that the transfer of material disadvantages from parents to children is a significant factor in all countries, and that poverty is identified as one of the main sources of inequality. This is an important issue from both the micro and macro perspectives. It highlights the need to focus on factors such as parental education, rather than on the economic environment of the household, given the bidirectional relationship between income and educational level. Looking back, Smith, Carrier, and Lawlor tell us that in 1989, the Government of Canada resolved to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000. This begs the question, 30 years later, why are there so many poor people in a country as rich as Canada? According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, national measures of poverty in Canada date to the 1960s, when poverty became a public issue. In 1968, Statistics Canada released a study on the incomes of Canadians that became the basis for defining and measuring low incomes in Canada. In the same year, the Canada Economic Council of Canada shocked the nation by using this new low income measure to estimate the extent of poverty in Canada. It concluded that 27% of Canadian population lived in poverty. The Canada Assistance Plan was introduced in 1966. As a comprehensive social assistance program, it replaced the federal and provincial governments piecemeal cost-shared programs, some of which had been in place since 1927. During the 1970s and early 1980s, most legislative activity either represented slight improvements to or cut backs in earlier legislated programs. The Unemployment Insurance Act was amended in 1971 to provide more extensive coverage to the unemployed and to the sick. The Child Tax Credit of 1978 extended federal benefits to families with children in a manner that was most beneficial to low income families. The 1980s meanwhile were marked by budget cuts on income provision and social services directed towards the poor. These cuts were accelerated in the 1990s as reported by the Canadian Encyclopedia. In an effort to combat child poverty, the Canada Child Tax Benefit was introduced in 1998. In the 1995 budget, the Canada Assistance Plan was replaced by the Canada Health and Social Transfer. This new funding arrangement merged federal transfer payments for social assistance with those for health and post-secondary education into a single block fund transfer. As a result, provinces now have greater discretion over social programs and spending, including those programs intended to alleviate or prevent poverty. The economic and income distribution system in Canada is still evolving from the precepts of 19th century capitalism, although the government involvement in the income distribution process ensures that those in need and those without economic means do receive some assistance. But because individuals are held responsible for their inability to benefit from the economic system, the amount of aid is generally small. Most wealth is distributed through a market-based economic system under which ownership of resources and well-paying jobs are the keys to an adequate share of the economic benefits. Those who are unable to find a decent place within this market system single mothers, for example, must rely on some combination of assistance from family, social organizations, and government. According to the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, British Columbia was the last province in the country to implement a poverty reduction strategy in 2019. The province's Poverty Reduction Strategy Act received its first consent in 2018 and sought to reduce BC's child poverty rate by 50% and the overall poverty rate by 25% by the year 2024. According to British Columbia, the strategy, named Together BC, is built on the principles of affordability, opportunity, reconciliation, and social inclusion. Together BC focuses on six priority action areas. More affordable housing for more people, supporting families, children, and youth, expanding access to education and training, more opportunities, more jobs, improving income support, and investing in social inclusion. Together BC states that as part of making government work better for everyone, gender-based analysis plus is being used across government to assess how diverse groups will be impacted by policies, programs, and budgets. This lens, which goes beyond gender, to consider factors like ethnicity, religion, LGBTQ2S, income, geography, age, and ability, was embedded in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Act. However, there is no mention of the gender pay gap or the gendered policies that impact women specifically. Legislation mandates Together BC to consider the unique needs of children and youth and women and persons of all genders. It's concerning to note that women have been grouped in with persons of all genders when we know that women face distinct challenges in our society. Together BC strategizes to support families, children, and youth by implementing universal child care prototypes, investing in dental care, fair pharma care, increasing foster care rates, better support for former youth in care, harmonizing rates for family caregivers, improving rates for home share providers, and tougher family maintenance enforcement. Together BC sets out to expand access to education and training by eliminating interest on BC student loans, providing skills training for older workers, skills development for people needing extra support, tuition-free adult basic education and English language learning, and investing in trades training. These are no doubt important factors in societal well-being. However, none of them address access to higher education for mothers. Rather, they keep mothers dependent on the system and further and further away from self-sufficiency. The latest Together BC annual report explicitly states that children in lone parent families are more than three times more likely to live in poverty and that barriers to education can be linked to poverty. Yet, this unique population is excluded from the strategy's targets. It's interesting to note that one of the five foundational elements of the strategy is to leverage existing initiatives and supports. However, there is zero mention of BC's Single Parent Employment Initiative, also known as SPIE. Implemented in 2015, the SPIE program aims to remove barriers that single parents on income assistance can face when returning to the workforce through up to 12 months of funded training for in-demand jobs or work experience placements, child care costs, transportation assistance, and employment readiness workshops. Participants are able to remain on income or disability assistance while enrolled in a training program. They will also continue to be supported in the first year of employment with child care costs and supplemental health coverage, which includes MSP premiums and pharma care coverage. Single parents are eligible for the program only if they are currently on income or disability assistance. To qualify for the funded training, parents must have been on assistance for at least three months prior to applying for the initiative. This eligibility requirement excludes parents who are working. As we learned from the Canadian Encyclopedia, low-income Canadians include the working poor, those who have jobs, and the welfare poor, those relying mainly on government assistance. Eligibility for the SPIE program should be open to all low-income families, regardless of their source of income. In the past month, the program's list of possible training options has been updated to include early childhood education, as our province is currently facing a shortage of these workers. And with that addition, the website has been updated to state that two years of study could be funded. However, the policy should shift to expand the 12-month to two-year study limit to include four-year degrees so that parents have the opportunity to earn higher incomes for their families, become self-sufficient, and gain dignity by becoming independent rather than reliant on government support. Mothers and policy makers have their work cut out for them, no doubt. But social workers play a key role in influencing these changes as well. According to the CASW Code of Ethics, Value 1, Respect for Inherent Worth and Dignity of All Persons, social workers uphold the right of every person to be free from violence and threat of violence. Although forms of structural violence may be covert, making it harder to pinpoint, we know that it exists, and we must resist the culture of systemic oppression. At a personal level, we share power and knowledge with our clients as they navigate these systems. We educate ourselves so that we may direct people to appropriate agencies and sources of funding. In the case of single mothers on the SPEE program, educational funding is provided through WorkBC. We also do our due diligence by educating other service providers. For example, WorkBC caseworkers may not be aware of all educational programs offered from different schools. We advocate for our clients by gathering such information and sharing it with caseworkers who hold the power to approve or deny applications. Learning from WEST and doing the good work of employing progressive, anti-privilege frameworks, we share power not only by educating others, but learning from them as well. In gaining insight by giving people safe spaces to share their lived experience, we also allow them to feel heard and valued. As taught by WEST, we take on traitorous identities by using our position of privilege within social systems to challenge oppression within the agencies we work for. Through a feminist lens of understanding, we are transparent and aware of our own position and values as they impact our practice. Only by deconstructing our social graces can we confront our privilege. We are critically reflexive, committed to social justice, culturally sensitive, and empower others from a strengths-based approach. We are not saviors. We are advocates and facilitators. WEST teaches us that anti-oppressive, anti-privilege work is dialectical, where links are made between personal problems and their structural causes. We become social activists and we demand change within the policies that hold people down. In conclusion, BC's Poverty Reduction Strategy Act fails those who are most impacted by poverty. By failing to address access to higher education for lower mothers, the PRS Act perpetuates structural oppression. The policy must shift to reflect the fact that children are in poverty because their parents are in poverty, and to recognize that higher education is fundamental to breaking the cycle of poverty. Again, this is Dawn Puzo at Thompson Rivers University in Social Work 3000 Canadian Social Policy. Take care.
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