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Shea's Story Part 3 - Stonewalled

By Peter Ewart

By Peter Ewart

In previous installments of this series, we have explained the difficulties that Shea Anker faces as a blind person, and as a single mother of two young boys. We have also discussed the importance of her having a homecare worker come in to help keep on top of things in the household and to help her with the children. Now we turn to the problems Shea faces with the provincial government bureaucracy.

As previously mentioned, Shea came back to Prince George with her kids in October of 2003 and was able to arrange, through the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) and the Ministry of Human Resources (MHR), for a modest homecare subsidy of $550 a month. Things in her life were working relatively well with the homecare worker, a young UNBC student, coming in for a few hours a day, five days a week. Shea’s two kids were especially responding well, learning better how to interact with their mother.

Then, seemingly out of the blue, in Spring of 2005, Shea was told by an MCFD representative that her homecare subsidy was being cut from $550 a month to $250 a month on the basis that her children were no longer “at risk” in the home as a result of being raised by a blind single parent. The Ministry officials did not explain why, if there had been a level of “risk” before, it was somehow no longer present. If anything, for Shea, raising the kids had become a greater challenge and support was even more important as the children grew older and were able to run around and get into mischief.

Shea has not taken this cutting of her stipend quietly. She and her father Lionel, who lives in Langley, sent a flurry of emails and letters to Ministry officials, MLAs and others asking that the funding be reinstated. The funding was extended for three months and then cut off for good in May 2005. As a result, Shea has had a hard time maintaining her household and is especially concerned about not having someone around to assist her in the home with her children. Despite these difficulties, Shea has made every effort to understand why MCFD has ceased recommending that she receive this funding and, further, has tried everything within her power to try and get the Ministry to realize why having dollars for home support is so important to her and her children.

Dealing with the provincial government has been a nightmare. Everywhere Shea goes she runs into stonewalls and government bureaucracy. For example, because of recent policy changes, she no longer has a caseworker assigned to her who is knowledgeable about her particular situation. Thus, each time she contacts the Ministry, Shea is routed to a kind of Ministry call centre where she speaks to a new representative each time. Shea must then explain her case from start to finish, only to be routed to someone else where she has to repeat the process yet again. Such rigmarole has gone on literally dozens of times. Although she is blind and faces obvious mobility problems, Ministry officials have rarely visited her home, but instead have insisted that she come into the office for even the most minor paper work.

Despite the fact that the various government Ministries are well aware that she cannot see, they persist in sending Shea letters written in ordinary print, sometimes with specific deadlines to be met or her funding will be cut off. These Ministries have the technology to write letters in Braille, but for some reason have not done so.

In addition, every six months or so, Shea is required to go into Ministry offices and go through the whole involved process of reapplying for funding, completing extensive forms, and so on. Officials also demand that she bring letters from doctors affirming that she is, indeed, blind, even though the Ministry is fully aware that she has been blind since birth and has no hope of ever being able to see.

All of these problems are compounded by the fact that, in order to get funding, she must first get a referral from the Ministry of Children and Families, which is an involved process unto itself, and then on her own, apply for funding from the Ministry of Human Resources, which is another complicated process. Thus, she has been whipsawed between two bureaucracies, told contradictory things at each, and forced to make countless phone calls and visits in vain attempts to sort out the chaos and confusion. As Shea points out with frustration, it is impossible “to get a straight answer from them.”

In addition, there are true Catch-22 situations. Just one example - a Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) representative told her that he would no longer be giving her a referral for funding from the Ministry of Human Resources (MHR). Thus the MHR would not give her the funding. However, he assured her, she could launch an appeal with the MHR, which Shea attempted to do. Forced to go down to the MHR offices to get an appeal kit, Shea was told by an MHR official that she was not allowed to launch an appeal because – and here is the Catch-22 – the funds are legislated and not subject to appeal. It is through such machinations that both Ministries appear to avoid responsibility and leave Shea caught in a bureaucratic limbo with no chance of appeal. Later, confidentially, a low level Ministry worker told her that the reason that the Ministry was making it so hard for disabled people to get appeal kits was because it was losing too many cases.

Even repeated requests for assistance to her MLA in Prince George and to the Minister of Human Resources have gone nowhere. As a result, Shea and her kids are left twisting in the wind. And they are not alone. Many disabled people across the province are complaining bitterly about a process that demeans and diminishes them. But the real life experience of disabled persons themselves does not stop provincial government representatives from organizing glossy press conferences announcing all that they are doing for persons with disabilities or from participating in photo ops with disabled athletes.

After listening to Shea’s story, it seems that it would be difficult for even a practiced lawyer to work her or his way through the nooks and crannies, ins and outs, and dead ends of the government bureaucracy. Yet people with disabilities, like Shea, who are having a tough time trying to make a good home for themselves and their children, are required to do so every day.

Surely if someone in this province needed a reasonable homecare subsidy, Shea would be it – blind, with a limited income, on her own, and raising two young children. But it is not to be. Far from helping citizens with disabilities, government bureaucracy appears to be designed to wear them down and reduce the already meager support they receive.

Some might argue that there are reasons why the home support stipend had to be cut. Perhaps it’s not the purview of MCFD to provide long term recommendations for such support. Or maybe new policies at MHR (now known as the Ministry of Employment & Income Assistance) mean that Shea doesn’t fit the criteria. And it’s possible that MLAs and Ministers actually believe that Shea has enough support to take care of herself and support her family. If we interviewed managers at both Ministries, we might be able to get a perfectly “legal” (by bureaucratic standards) explanation about why Shea does not qualify for additional support. Of course, none of that discussion can take place due to confidentiality restraints on Ministry employees. But does it really matter what the legalities may be? Are these legalities really the issue? Does it really matter if we understand the intricacies of why, according to its bureaucratic logic, the Ministry is “right”? Or if we learn the ins and outs of how Ministry staff are flawlessly implementing government policy? We don’t think so.

Here is an independent-minded, young woman without sight who wants to raise her children – not in the lap of luxury – just in a simple life with some assistance. But the unbelievable fact remains that, despite our extensive social service programs, a meager allowance for some very limited assistance in her home is not available to her.

Our next and last article in this series will look further at the nature of this monolithic bureaucracy which looms so high over Shea and her kids. Is it there to help people in need or is there some other agenda?

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