The following article is authored by Mohammad Ferdosi, Peter Graefe, Wayne Lewchuk and Stephanie Ross.

• People with disabilities receiving last resort social assistance experience lasting impacts from a crisis which can follow them for years, including financial, nutrition and health worsening as the costs of living increase.
• Social participation in community networks and services enables survival, such as access to food, housing, and employment, but access to these networks requires some level of financial security.
• Benefits to the least financially secure should be redesigned to facilitate uninterrupted access to community networks so as to support the ability for social participation.
   

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Building inclusive societies resistant to crises requires an understanding of how different groups fared during these past few years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Differently situated individuals followed distinct trajectories through the shutdown of early 2020 and subsequent rounds of pandemic restrictions. A front-line food service worker faced a different set of economic and employment challenges than a public schoolteacher or a financial services professional, and is more likely to emerge from the pandemic with rent arrears, debt and an interrupted record of employment.

Of particular interest here is the experience of people with disabilities receiving last resort social assistance in Ontario, Canada’s largest province. At the pandemic’s onset, a single individual receiving Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) payments received 1169 CAD per month (for an income of 1272 CAD when other benefits and credits are included). That benefit remained the same (except for a 100 CAD/month top up from April to July 2020) until it was increased to 1228 CAD in July 2022 (Pin et al., 2022). Local health units in Ontario calculated that the cost of a single bedroom apartment and a nutritionally appropriate diet would more than consume the entire income in larger centres (such as Ottawa or the Halton, York and Durham regions surrounding Toronto), and leave less than 3 CAD per day in many secondary centres for other expenses (such as clothing, utilities, transportation). Before the pandemic, ODSP recipients got by through survival strategies such as using food banks and other charities, holding on to low-rent accommodations, working small jobs or sharing accommodations (Smith-Carrier et al., 2020; for first-person accounts, see Swift et al., 2010). When the pandemic hit, they were particularly vulnerable to any increases in costs or interruptions to their survival strategies.

When working-aged Ontarians in late 2020 were surveyed (Ferdosi et al., 2021) about the pandemic’s effects on their standard of living, the immediate impact was considerable: over half of the recipients of last resort social assistance who answered the survey reported days with no food. A third of these social assistance recipients reported often not having enough to eat, and two thirds reported buying nutritious food less often. On all metrics, whether financial situation or self-reported physical and mental health, ODSP recipients experienced more severe negative impacts than the recipients of pandemic benefits for laid-off workers or those who kept their work (Ferdosi et al., 2021).

In following up with ODSP recipients, in late 2022 twenty respondents were interviewed to understand how the pandemic had affected them over a longer time frame. From these qualitative interviews, two findings stand out. First, things got worse rather than better. The most obvious issue was the rising cost of living: food inflation and rising rent costs put incredible stress on already tight finances. Without prompting, nearly half of our interviewees shared their budgeting practices, and how the increased costs of the pandemic had to be compensated by using savings (for instance, in buying a pair of winter boots) or by cutting meals.

The second key finding from the interviews was the importance of connections. The closure of in-person services at many community and charitable organisations had significant effects on our interviewees. In many cases, it undermined survival strategies. Take food charity: it became harder to get, less accessible to people with disabilities (given long waits in line or unreachable distances due to reduced public transit) or could no longer be tailored to dietary restrictions like celiac disease. But pandemic conditions also undermined social participation and mental health as the affordable sociality of community choirs, religious services, public libraries and community drop-ins closed and were slow to re-open. Even by late 2022, many of these connections remained closed – in some cases permanently.

These circumstances made extended friend and family networks very important. Where such networks were present, they enabled the sharing and pooling of resources. For our interviewees who left unsafe living situations over the pandemic, the assistance of friends and family in finding or providing shelter was fundamental. Most of our interviewees nevertheless reported that the pandemic made it harder to maintain these connections, either due to the difficulty of contact (for example, people were avoiding public transit to reduce the risk of infection) or because a one-sided asking for help (such as small loans from family and friends) undermined the relationship.

The policy implications of the importance of connection are not self-evident, as state action in interpersonal relationships and community self-organisation is often resisted and seen as intrusive.

However, paradoxically, the importance of sustaining connection may loop back to benefit adequacy. Certainly, in emergency situations, if connection-supported survival strategies are cut off, people must resort to purchasing what they have lost. For instance, if a community food program closes, then you must buy more of your own food. Compensatory emergency benefits are crucial, as existing financial support no longer stretches nearly as far. More generally, interviewees with greater financial means could make and sustain the connections that would help support them with non-financial resources. People traded social contact in the form of a modest restaurant meal in order to stay on budget to buy a new pair of pants per year or a pair of sandals every three years. Even two-way bus fare to a gathering would require several days of compensatory fasting. Relations with friends and family were strained when the financial pinch of the pandemic and post-pandemic inflation forced interviewees to make greater demands on their connections for help.

In sum, connections matter enormously for the ability of the least financially secure to get by despite very low state benefits. However, past a certain point, the low benefits undermine those very connections. If such benefits wish to meet other policy goals, such as increased social participation and employability, they need to be set at a level that supports participation rather than impedes it. In other words, a more comprehensive and adequate social safety net will not only improve the lives of those in need but also promote broader social and economic goals.   

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References

Ferdosi, M., Graefe, P., Lewchuk, W. and Ross, S. (2021) Assessing the Impact of COVID-19 on Ontario Workers, Workplaces and Families. Available at:  https://labourstudies.socsci.mcmaster.ca/research/assessing-the-impact-of-covid-19-on-ontario-workers-workplaces-and-families/. 

Pin, L., Levac, L. and Rodenburg, E. (2022) “Legislated poverty? an intersectional policy analysis of COVID-19 income support programs in Ontario, Canada,” Journal of Poverty. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10875549.2022.2113590. 

Smith-Carrier, T., Montgomery, P., Mossey, S., Shute, T., Forchuk, C., and Rudnick, A. (2020) “Erosion of social support for disabled people in Ontario: An appraisal of the Ontario Disability Support Program using a human rights framework.” Canadian Journal of Disability Studies. Available at: https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v9i1.594.

Swift, J., Balmer, B., and Dineen, M. (2010) Persistent Poverty: Voices from the Margins. Toronto: Between the Lines.

The findings discussed in this article will be made available in a mini-report here. This think piece draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. This research is a component of a joint project conducted in partnership with the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction.

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Mohammad Ferdosi is a PhD graduate of the Department of Political Science at McMaster University, Canada and Sessional Lecturer at Canadian Universities.

Peter Graefe is an Associate Professor of the Department of Political Science at McMaster University, Canada.

Wayne Lewchuk is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Labour Studies and the Department of Economics at McMaster University, Canada.

Stephanie Ross is Director and Associate Professor of the School of Labour Studies at McMaster University, Canada.

The facts, ideas and opinions expressed in this piece are those of the authors; they are not necessarily those of UNESCO or any of its partners and stakeholders and do not commit nor imply any responsibility thereof. The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this piece do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.