Nourishing Neighbours: A Joint Initiative to Find Creative Solutions to Food Security for Halton’s Vulnerable Populations (Neighbours)

This report is a summary of the findings from qualitative data collected from a group of food program users, herein referred to as ‘neighbours’, held at the Oakville Neighbourhood Centre, February 22, 2017

Supporting pregnant women experiencing homelessness:an information tool for midwives

This infographic was produced based on research by Sara Cumming and supervised by Dr. Andrew Symon both from the Mother, Infant and Child Research Group, School of Health Sciences, University of Dundee. The research was supported by Wellbeing of Women's Entry Level Scholarship for Midwives research fund. The infographic was developed in collaboration with several key Third Sector Organisations involved in the research: 'Exploring homeless women's experiences of pregnancy whilst in temporary accommodation'

Housing Hurdles: A Joint Initiative to Find Creative Solutions to Housing for Halton’s Vulnerable Populations

This report is a summary of the findings from qualitative data collected from a series of six focus groups that were conducted at the Housing Summit at the Botanical Gardens in Burlington, Ontario, October 13, 2016

Rationing ‘Rights’: Supplementary Welfare Benefits and Lone Moms

Previous research has illuminated the effects of the welfare reform in Canada post-1995. However, very little research has focused upon the ways welfare is delivered. Using four supplementary benefits available to social assistance recipients as the backdrop, this paper explores the discretionary practices employed in determining eligibility. Based on interviews with lone mothers and a focus group with social assistance case workers the data illuminates that a lone mother’s ability to access supplementary benefits is based upon rationing practices which may have little to do with her legitimate need and formal eligibility, such that practice, in the hands of caseworkers, contravenes the policy intention

Lone Mothers Exiting Social Assistance: Gender, Social Exclusion and Social Capital

After the North American wave of “welfare reform” in the 1990s, much research has measured the success of the work-to-welfare model. Lone mothers as a group have proved a particularly intractable challenge to policies aimed at moving welfare recipients into the labour market and financial independence. The present dissertation focuses on lone mother welfare recipients and explores the processes they live as they receive and attempt to leave social assistance. This research adds to current scholarship by identifying factors that promote or frustrate the process of exiting social assistance, and by examining the effectiveness of policies and programs aimed at integrating these welfare recipients into the labour market. Concentrating on the welfare regime in Ontario, this dissertation explores the experiences of a diverse sample of thirty lone mothers participating in Ontario Works, the provincially-mandated work-to-welfare program. Each lone mother was interviewed annually for a series of four interviews. Focus groups with caseworkers provided insight into the lone mothers’ processes of attempting to leave social assistance, highlighting the differences between program design and program delivery. The dissertation asks three overarching research questions: What is the role of the provincial welfare regime in transitioning lone mothers from receipt of social assistance to paid employment? How did the lone mothers’ lives change over the study period? What elements facilitated exiting social assistance and what elements acted as obstacles or barriers? The research and analysis are shaped by three theoretical lenses; gender, social exclusion and social capital. The results highlight that there is no predictive factor: no profile emerged of the lone mother most likely to achieve independence. The research identifies “stayers”, “leavers” and three additional groups: “blenders”, “traders”, and “betweeners,” and establishes that while many exit the welfare stream, few did so because of financial independence. These results point to substantial inadequacies in the provincial work-to-welfare programming in addressing the particular needs of lone mothers. Gender neutral policies proved to overlook the key aspects to lone mothers’ experiences, such as their caregiving responsibilities and the realities of a labour market that stratifies based on gender. Lone mothers were effectively excluded from programs designed to increase bridging and linking social capital; such programs are only available to recipients who have succeeded in eliminating their barriers to joining the labour market. Bonding social capital, which is not targeted by Ontario Works and which depends on the personal resources of each woman, emerges as the key determinant of success in exiting, as it allows the lone mothers to overcome the caregiving challenge. The research also indicates that those without bonding social capital are those most likely to be socially excluded from multiple social realms

Changing the Game: The Continuous Adaptation of Resilient Single Mothers

This paper explores theoretical and conceptual developments in our understanding of resilience as these apply to single mother-led families. Rather than the earlier and simpler notion that resilience implied \u27bouncing back\u27 we suggest, consistent with work by other resilience scholars, that the varied demonstrations of resilience are a ‘changing of the game’. By this we mean that resilience involves the creation of new outcomes, or, new ways of being through constant adaptation. Further, we argue this transformation to resilient ways of being occurs across all categories of resilience. This is a significant contribution of this work as we submit that even for those single mothers who appear to be just coping, their behaviours manifest significant and strategic adaptation. This important finding suggests critically new and important ways in which the life experiences and adaptive responses of single mothers should be perceived. The findings and analyses offered here derive from feminist, participatory research with 18 single mothers in focus groups and 20 in semi-structured interviews. Following the requisite ethics review processes and ensuring the confidentiality of all data, we utilized this extensive data set to examine these mothers’ responses to their experiences of adversity. These included the transitions associated with family break up, solo parenting, the stigma associated with being a single mom, loss of financial security (which often necessitated social assistance receipt) and for some, coping with abuse-induced trauma. Based on these findings, we offer policy and practice implications in relation to lone mothers and their families. Among others are suggestions that social workers and other frontline practitioners better recognize and appreciate the achievements that might be demonstrated by ‘just coping’ and policy changes that support families through family break up

Innovations from the Margins: Creating Inclusive and Equitable Academic-Community Research Collaborations

How does one build a Request for Proposals (RFP) process that allows for bottom-up participation while simultaneously being pragmatic and adept enough to manoeuvre the complexities of a multi-stakeholder environment defined by differing interests, objectives, mandates, and power dynamics? This article showcases the findings from participatory work with stakeholder groups working in the area of food security in Southern Ontario’s Halton Region. It demonstrates a process designed with the specific intent of increasing the engagement of beneficiaries and service providers in the RFP process. Finally, the article seeks to shed additional light on theory and practice of “participatory approaches” in the context of philanthropy. It is important to be realistic in not reifying participation itself in this context. In both theory and practice, this means adopting lenses and models that openly consider the complex realities, political obstacles, and trade-offs that occur when negotiating participation in this environment

Innovations from the Margins: The Community Ideas Factory community collaboration

This paper explores the importance of building more inclusive, equitable, and mutually-beneficial partnerships in academic-community research collaborations for social innovation. The Community Ideas Factory is a research project that examines food security, affordable housing, employment equity and wrap-around services in the Region of Halton in Ontario, Canada. The project is a unique and dynamic collaboration between researchers from Sheridan College and the Oakville Community Foundation. In recognizing the limitations of traditional, paternalistic, subjective academic-community research collaborations this paper discusses how Participatory Rural Appraisal tools and other community-based problem-solving activities can be used to help communities define and prioritize their own problems, identify resources, and develop practical solutions to the problems they experience. We seek to demonstrate the potential of a new role for the ‘researcher’; one in which she/he assumes a more active and dynamic, yet facilitative, role in community project-building. Drawing examples from our research into food security this examination aims to provide insights, directions, and considerations for scholars, community stakeholders, and granting agencies alike who share an interest in the prospects and possibilities of academic-community collaborations for social innovation research

The Lone Mother Resilience Project: A Qualitative Secondary Analysis

Although qualitative secondary analyses are conducted across the social sciences, supra-assorted analyses that involve both the re-use of existing data and the collection of new, primary data are relatively uncommon. Additionally, discussions regarding qualitative secondary analysis have tended to ignore the re-use of researchers\u27 own data (i.e., auto-data). Thus, with this article, we aim to contribute to this discussion by providing an example of a supra-assorted analysis in which we re-used data from one of our previous studies, Lone Mothers: Building Social Inclusion. This earlier, longitudinal study was conducted with 104 poor lone mothers across Canada. We supplemented this dataset with data from three focus groups and 20 semi-structured interviews engaging a total of 38 lone mothers. Both studies were informed by a feminist and social inclusion lens, and recruited a diverse sample of women in three cities across the country: Vancouver, British Columbia; Toronto, Ontario; and St. John\u27s, Newfoundland. In addition, most of the lone mothers who participated in the secondary analysis had also been involved in the original study as interviewees and/or research assistants. We conclude the article by discussing the strengths and limitations of, and lessons learned from, the secondary study\u27s design