Year-to-year funding leaves community-based orgs in uncertainty: unions

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Several Saskatchewan unions are chastising the provincial authorities for investing what they name a naked minimal into community-based organizations (CBOs) in the latest funds.

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SEIU-West joined CUPE Saskatchewan and SGEU to criticize funding allocations introduced in the current 2023-24 provincial funds, delivered final week.

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The three unions symbolize members who work in greater than 70 CBOs throughout Saskatchewan, offering helps to the province’s susceptible residents.

The funds outlines a $17.6 million “lift to base funding” for CBOs throughout the province for the continuation of providers, on the identical web page because it additionally outlines a $1 billion surplus tagged as “a strong bottom line.”

SEIU-West president Barbara Cape stated the funding is required, however not practically sufficient for a province in the midst of a psychological well being and addictions disaster.

“The budget that was presented last week did very little to address the cost of inflation, in terms of providing programs and services,” she stated, in an interview Wednesday.

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‘It’s an abdication of the duty of a authorities. I imply, should you’re not offering providers for susceptible folks in the province, what precisely is your goal?”

Members inside the three unions work in CBOs offering providers like baby care, psychological well being and addictions counselling, assist for people with disabilities and disaster helps for conditions like home violence.

Cape described CBOs as “the very last thread in the safety net we provide to vulnerable citizens in this province.”

As most CBOs obtain as a lot as three-quarters of operational funding from the province, she stated they’re left to offer the remaining {dollars} themselves by means of ways like personal fundraising or in search of grants.

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“If we’re relying on fundraisers, that is the very definition of a threadbare safety net, and it’s also a ridiculous funding model,” she stated.

The unions additionally critiqued the province’s continued stratagem of asserting funding year-to-year, as a substitute of creating a multi-year funding committments.

Cape stated not realizing what future funding could appear like leaves organizations in perpetual uncertainty about what applications they will supply.

“We’ve been asking for multi-year funding is so that people can have a predictable window — a three-year cycle or a two- or four-year cycle — in order to plan the programming the services and the staffing needs to do that work.”

The trio of employees’ unions need to see the province decide to multi-year funding offers with CBOs, to offer extra stability.

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She stated all three unions have been lobbying on this for practically a decade, with little ink to paper seen from provincial or federal officers, together with present Finance Minister Donna Harpauer, who was previously social providers minister.

Harpauer stated in the course of the presentation of the funds final week that she selected to to pay down the province’s debt with this yr’s surplus as a result of it will be unwise, for the long run, to depend on an unsure income increase to make guarantees on operational funding.

Like many different organizations — together with well being unions and the schooling sector — Cape stated unions are disillusioned the province has chosen debt fee over sector investments.

“It does nothing for the people of the province,” she stated. “In fact, it’s a scale back to these services, quite frankly.”

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Organizations are having to chop choices or stave off hiring employees, which Cape stated outcomes in lengthy wait lists for remedy areas or restricted service choices for these most in want.

“What it can lead to is the shattering of services completely,” she stated.

“These folks know how to wring every last morsel out of a penny, how to cut it close to the bone,” she stated. “But there is no more fat to be trimmed. Now, we’re cutting into the meat of services they provide.”

lkurz@postmedia.com

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