inclusion Powell River is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.
The community living advocacy group for people with disabilities is one of a handful of agencies across the province that banded together in 1955 to create what is now called inclusion British Columbia.
Faith Bodnar, executive director of inclusion BC, made the trip from her office in New Westminster to participate in inclusion Powell River’s annual general meeting and anniversary held Thursday, October 2, at Community Living Place.
Calling Powell River “a hotbed for inclusion” Bodnar praised the work that has been done not only here but around the province. Bodnar has worked in community living for the past 30 years and been a part of the social movement.
“BC is known as being the most innovative jurisdiction around the country in supporting people with disabilities,” she said. “We have things that no other province has. We were the first to have individualized funding, representation agreements which safeguard the decision rights of vulnerable people and micro-boards to support individuals.”
Bodnar said sometimes it is taken for granted that so much progress has been made.
“Community organizations like inclusion Powell River are so good at what they have done in some ways it has been an invisible history,” she said. “They are embedded in communities and do amazing work, but no one really brags about it.”
Over the past 60 years a lot of important work has been done to make communities more inclusive for people with disabilities and developmental delays.
“We don’t so much forge new ground the way we used to have to; what we do now is make that ground more innovative and more inclusive,” she said. “We’re in a much broader human rights conversation than we have ever been in.”
Woodlands, the province’s last institution for people with disabilities, was closed in 1998. Now persons with disabilities live in residences with a maximum of two people and receive the individualized supports they require.
Bodnar spoke about her concerns with the recent teacher strike with its focus on class composition.
“When students with special needs were identified as a problem group that really raised a flag for our movement and me,” she said.
She takes issue with how quickly a broader issue about financing public education turned into trying to limit the number of students with special needs in classrooms. “They aren’t a financial drain on the school system, nor are they disruptive to the education of other students. We’ve known that for the past 35 years.”
What this issue really spoke to, she said, was how quickly society can slip backwards into “oppressive and morally wrong positions.”
What needs to be addressed is chronic underfunding for public education and making sure teachers have the supports they need, she said.
“Segregated education did not begin because it was thought to be the best way to teach kids,” she added. “It began because those families who started our movement in the 50s said they wanted their kids to go to school, but the doors on the school were shut on them.”
Bodnar explained that the parents fundraised, built schools, hired teachers and developed curriculum because they believed in both the fundamental rights and the ability of their children to learn.
In the 1970s, as all children were granted the rights to public education, those schools were taken over by school districts and were closed and those children were included in more and more regular classrooms, she said.
“Inclusion is the best practice and we know how to do it,” she said.
The percentage of students with special needs in BC schools has not changed in almost 15 years, said Bodnar. “It’s about 10 per cent of the population of students, about 60,000, and 25,000 of those would be eligible for additional support.”
She said that it is actually less than five per cent of the total number of students in the system who need additional supports which range from assistive technologies to the support of a special education assistant or an assessment.
Economic inclusion is also an area that the provincial organization and its community agencies have been working to address.
Bodnar said across the country 75 per cent of persons with disabilities are unemployed.
“We want to have the same of employment for people with developmental disabilities that is mirrored in the rest of the population,” she said.
Economic independence is good for the government and good for society, she added.
To that end, inclusion BC has created an employment services program called Ready, Willing and Able which aims to link employers with community agencies like inclusion Powell River.
Persons with disabilities on government support receive $906 per month and are permitted to earn up to $800 per month from employment before their benefits are affected.
inclusion BC is working on a plan to increase benefits to $1,200 and have it indexed to increases in the cost of living. Bodnar said the advocacy group is also proposing the government apply its rental subsidy program for seniors called Safer to include persons with disabilities.
“We can not afford, not at any level, to not have fully contributing citizens,” she said. “When people are not able to contribute to the best of their abilities, we lose as a whole society.”
Businesses embrace inclusion
A high percentage of people with disabilities are unemployed and inclusion advocates are helping employers to see the business case for embracing diversity.
inclusion BC executive director Faith Bodnar said that across the country about 75 per cent of people with disabilities are unemployed.
“There’s huge amounts of information which says that people with disabilities, particularly developmental disabilities, make good employees,” said Bodnar. “You have high retention rates, people are dependable and want to be there.”
Jim Agius is one Powell River businessperson who has learned this first hand.
Agius was approached in 1999 by Malerie Meeker who at the time was executive director for Powell River Association for Community Living. She told him about the organization’s employment services program.
Meeker brought Andrew Graff, a man with a developmental delay, to meet him.
“I recognized Andrew from my catechism years,” said Agius. “In the 1960s I went to Sunday school and there was this kid that showed up every week but we didn’t see him at school or on the street playing road hockey or soccer.” Already knowing Graff, Agius felt “a social responsibility toward hiring him because I know the way we treated people like Andrew in the 60s—the names we called them and the places we put them.”
After more than 15 years, Graff still works full time in Agius’s company.
“He’s our longest term employee in the Powell River area,” said Agius. “It’s been fantastic working with Andrew.”
Agius said that hiring Graff has had a positive effect on his crew. “It created a cohesion, this looking out for Andrew, finding out what Andrew’s strengths were,” he said. “He’s got some really positive attributes that help him work with us, so we created these jobs for him. To this day, he’s the guy who does those tasks for our company.”
Christine Hollmann, another local businessperson, also spoke about her company’s experiences hiring a person with disabilities.
“It requires a shift in mentality by employers,” she said. “Don’t just do it as a token hire, but because it makes business sense.”
Hollmann said that the experience has been excellent and has pushed her to think about ways to partition work into manageable pieces that are better suited for persons with disabilities.
David Morris from Model Community Project said that according to Statistics Canada there are approximately 1,300 people in the Powell River area on disability pensions who are classed as working age, but are unemployed. Of those, about 50 per cent are actively looking for work.
Bodnar said there is a business case for hiring this previously untapped labour market.
“Our places of employment should reflect society,” she said. “To be confident as an employer that you can accommodate the breadth and scope of diversity in your business or shop is good for business. I walk into those places and I see my whole community reflected in the workforce. I think that’s important.”
