Media Releases

U of T study finds that cuts to local immigration partnerships may negatively impact newcomers to Toronto

October 30, 2012

TORONTO, ON — Cut­ting fund­ing and amal­ga­mat­ing the Local Immi­gra­tion Part­ner­ships (LIPs) — the net­work of orga­ni­za­tions and agen­cies work­ing togeth­er to coor­di­nate set­tle­ment ser­vices for recent immi­grants — will like­ly neg­a­tive­ly affect the esti­mat­ed 75,000 new­com­ers to Toron­to each year, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to study has found.

Although LIPs are facil­i­tat­ed by non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions, they are fed­er­al­ly fund­ed through Cit­i­zen­ship and Immi­gra­tion Cana­da (CIC). Fund­ing cuts in April 2012 result­ed in a 75% staff reduc­tion and an amal­ga­ma­tion of 17 LIPs to four region­al offices.

“This report reveals that social net­works among pro­fes­sion­als were a mag­ic ingre­di­ent for effec­tive gov­ern­ment-com­mu­ni­ty part­ner­ships with­in the set­tle­ment sec­tor”, says lead author and U of T PhD stu­dent Ralu­ca Bejan. “It shows that ded­i­cat­ed staff were mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in coor­di­nat­ing and inte­grat­ing Toron­to’s com­plex set­tle­ment sys­tem.”

“Amal­ga­ma­tion reduced the num­ber of staff posi­tions that were key in keep­ing the part­ner­ships between agen­cies strong and pro­duc­tive”, says the report’s sec­ond author Chris Black from Meta Strate­gies.

The report, enti­tled Bal­anc­ing the Bud­get but Who’s Left to Bud­get the Bal­ance: A visu­al Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Pro­fes­sion­al Net­works With­in Toron­to East Local Immi­gra­tion Part­ner­ship, was con­duct­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Fac­tor Inwen­tash Fac­ul­ty of Social Work in part­ner­ship with con­sult­ing firm Meta Strate­gies and Wood­Green Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vices. The study exam­ined deliv­ery of ser­vices for Toronto’s new­com­ers in the Toron­to East neigh­bour­hood, which includes the east­ern por­tion of the Old City of Toron­to and the dis­trict for­mer­ly known as the City of East York.

Among the report’s key find­ings:

• Paid LIP staff played a vital role in con­nect­ing set­tle­ment ser­vice providers.

• Fol­low­ing the removal of paid LIP posi­tions, 50% of the Part­ner­ship’s col­lab­o­ra­tive rela­tion­ships were no longer sus­tain­able.

Among the report’s rec­om­men­da­tions:

  • • Rein­state fund­ing for the LIP neigh­bour­hood-based oper­a­tional mod­el.
    • Make use of evi­dence informed eval­u­a­tion research to guide the LIPs future devel­op­ments.
    • Adopt a long term per­spec­tive on the set­tle­ment and inte­gra­tion process.

“It shows that col­lab­o­ra­tion hap­pens when staff resources are ded­i­cat­ed to it, as bet­ter infor­ma­tion-shar­ing makes the sys­tem work bet­ter for every­one”, says Diane Dyson, Direc­tor of Research and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy at Wood­Green Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vices.

Down­load the full report:

• Meta Strate­gies: http://www.metastrategies.com/portfolio/
• Wood­green: http://www.woodgreen.org/Resources/Publications.aspx

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 For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Ralu­ca Bejan
PhD stu­dent, report lead author
Fac­tor Inwen­tash Fac­ul­ty of Social Work
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Email: raluca.bejan@utoronto.ca

Chris Black
Meta Strate­gies
Tel: 514–518-6942
Email: chris@metastrategies.com

Diane Dyson
Direc­tor, Research & Pub­lic Pol­i­cy
Wood­Green Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vices,
Email: ddyson@woodgreen.org