Friends, Below is an insightful letter to the editor (re the clawback of the National Child Benefit Supplement) written by Sally Palmer, Chair of the Social Action Committee, Ontario Association of Social Workers, Hamilton & District Branch, (published in the Hamilton Spectator). Please feel free to share with others... (I received a copy from Sally this morning)... To read about the legal challenge to the clawback, visit the OPICCO website at http://www.opicco.org/feature2.htm Barbara Anello [log in to unmask] -------------------- Hunger rides a money-go-round RE: 'City's $100,000 Bails Out Desperate Food Banks,' Letter to Editor, by Sally Palmer Hamilton Spectator Dec. 15, 12:23 EDT (Dec. 6) It must be a relief for the staff and users of food banks that they will have more resources to feed hungry people, now that the city has turned over $100,000 from its emergency fund. It is ironic, however, that this money came from the city's share of the National Child Benefit Supplement (NCBS) money. This is federal money that is given to families on social assistance, with the goal of reducing child poverty. If the families were allowed to keep the NCBS -- over $100 per month for each child -- it is estimated that half of them could avoid coming to food banks, as found in a client survey by the Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank. Unfortunately, the Mike Harris Conservatives were in power when the NCBS began in 1998; they decided to treat this federal transfer as unearned income and deduct it from the cheques they sent to recipients of social assistance. One of the motivations was to encourage "attachment to the workforce," which is questionable logic, as about half the recipients of social assistance have disabilities and many others are the mothers of preschool children. The City of Hamilton benefits from the clawback, as the province transfers 20 per cent of the savings to municipalities to be spent on children's programs. Consequently, we have the ridiculous situation of our government taking money away from families, thereby increasing their levels of hunger, with the consequent rise in demands on food banks, which are then bailed out with the money that was originally taken from the hungry families. Although the city asserts that it spends the NCBS money on good programs for children, the need for these programs cannot be compared to the survival needs (for food and shelter) of the children whose families are on social assistance. One program, for example, is funded to provide children with bicycle helmets. Toronto and London both responded to the provincial clawback by putting their share of the clawback money into an emergency fund for families on social assistance. Hamilton should show that it is a compassionate community by doing the same. For more information about stopping the clawback, please call Jeff Wingard at the Social Planning and Research Council, 905-522-1148 ext. 311. -- Sally Palmer, Ontario Association of Social Workers, Hamilton & District Branch ______________________________________________________ ------------------- Problems/Questions? Send it to Listserv owner: [log in to unmask] To unsubscribe, send the following message in the text section -- NOT the subject header -- to [log in to unmask] SIGNOFF SDOH DO NOT SEND IT BY HITTING THE REPLY BUTTON. THIS SENDS THE MESSAGE TO THE ENTIRE LISTSERV AND STILL DOES NOT REMOVE YOU. To subscribe to the SDOH list, send the following message to [log in to unmask] in the text section, NOT in the subject header. SUBSCRIBE SDOH yourfirstname yourlastname To post a message to all 1000+ subscribers, send it to [log in to unmask] Include in the Subject, its content, and location and date, if relevant. For a list of SDOH members, send a request to [log in to unmask] To receive messages only once a day, send the following message to [log in to unmask] SET SDOH DIGEST To view the SDOH archives, go to: http://listserv.yorku.ca/archives/sdoh.html