Speaking notes for
L. Robin Cardozo, CEO, Ontario Trillium Foundation
9th Annual Forum of the Public Policy and Third Sector Initiative
Queen’s University, Kingston Ontario
November 20, 2009

I am delighted to be here, and to be sharing the podium with Deborah Tunis and Jim Frideres. This challenging but important topic interests us greatly at the Ontario Trillium Foundation, and I’m pleased to have an opportunity to share some of my observations, based on our experience.

I’d like to give you a quick thumb-nail sketch of who we are. I’ll then share a few specific stories – practical examples of how we look for indicators of success at grass-roots agencies. Then I will wrap-up with a few observations on the subject, and some questions we might get into during the discussion.

Let me begin with a little bit of background on the Ontario Trillium Foundation. OTF is an agency of the Government of Ontario. With a very generous budget of $120 million, our role is to build healthy and vibrant communities in Ontario, by building the capacity of the not-for-profit sector. We make about 1,500 grants a year, and at any point in time, manage 3,000 to 4,000 active grants. Supporting the valuable work of immigrant settlement agencies has always been an important part of what we do.

Newcomer Settlement Services – Success Indicators along the Continuum
Immigrant settlement is a process that individuals go through in very unique ways, according to their personal experiences and needs when they come to Canada. I can certainly attest to that when I compare my own experiences as an immigrant with those of friends and colleagues. 

It may be useful to think of settlement as taking place along a continuum.  Settlement services help newcomers progress through the process of acclimatizing to a new society, adapting to new situations and social networks, and then engaging and integrating into community life – including the ability to sustain a stable livelihood and develop a sense of belonging in their new home.

Ultimately, immigrant settlement work is about breaking down the barriers that can prevent immigrants from reaching their full potential.

My remarks today will include examples of initiatives that address key outcomes for immigrants at different points along this continuum.

In responding to the needs of newcomers and immigrant communities, a range of diverse and innovative services have emerged that target the needs of women, youth, children, foreign-trained professionals, families, and so on. Some of the most frequently provided services include: Settlement Counselling;
Language and Citizenship Training; Employment Services; and
Social Support Services.

Clearly, we’re talking about a highly complex sector with some unique challenges.

Research and experience tells us that new arrivals to Canada face four key barriers to success:

1. Language;
2. Employment, including credential recognition;
3. Networks; and
4. Complexity of services.

And the sector itself faces key challenges, including:

• Organizational Capacity;
• Evaluation and Research know-how;
• Collaboration and Coordinated Service; and
• The different requirements of funders

With this as a bit of backdrop, let’s take a closer look at the challenges related to outcomes measurement in this complex sector.

Successful integration is complex to measure – there are issues of attribution, finding common measures, and the challenges of tracking meaningful, long-term outcomes.

We would probably all agree that the single biggest challenge we face regarding immigrant settlement is that over the past 20 years, immigrants to our country have fallen behind economically in comparison with Canadian-born residents – despite the fact that most immigrants are highly educated and skilled.

Through the Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement (COIA) a list of outcomes for settlement programs has been defined. They’re organized around immediate, intermediate and longer-term results for both individual clients and the organizations serving them.

The longer-term outcomes are that Canadian society benefits from the contribution of newcomers, who are accepted and engaged in Canadian life – newcomers fully participate in all sectors of Canadian society – economic, political, social and cultural.

I’d like to locate the mini-case studies I’m going to turn to within these specific themes.

The Peace Bridge Newcomer Centre, in Fort Erie
We all know that a key contributor to successful immigrant settlement is ensuring a welcoming environment for newcomers, and early opportunities for them to feel included in community life.

Fort Erie, Ontario, a town of about 30,000 people, is the second largest port of entry in Canada for refugee claimants, after Pearson Airport in Toronto.

The Peace Bridge Newcomer’s Centre is the first of its kind in Canada, and offers an important solution to ensuring a welcoming environment for newcomers, as well as a coordinated approach to key services for refugees.

Fort Erie has fewer resources than larger centres like Toronto to meet the challenges of 400 refugees arriving on their doorstep every month. Thirty per cent of refugees are school-age children and approximately five per cent of youth refugees arrive unaccompanied by an adult.

The Peace Bridge Newcomers Centre is a model of best practice. It is co-located with the Canadian Border Services Agency’s Refugee Processing Unit right on the Peace Bridge – you literally “can’t miss it” upon entering the country. All refugees are greeted by professional staff who provide independent information on the refugee claim process. Children are provided with a welcome kit, and a supervised play area is available for children during interviews. Staff assist claimants in finding temporary shelter if required. Immediate referrals are offered to language, schooling, youth programs and job counselling in the community.

One of the fascinating outcomes has been that while most refugees see Fort Erie as a doorway to the GTA or Montreal, in fact 15% end up choosing Fort Erie / Niagara as a place to settle – one of the outcomes they work to measure.

The YMCA of Greater Toronto
The YMCA of Greater Toronto has for many years been a major provider of newcomer services in the GTA. They provide four main services/programs to newcomers:

• Language Assessment & Referral Centres (ALINC)
• Newcomer Information & Referral Centres (NIC)
• Korean Community Services
• Newcomer Youth Leadership Development Program (NYLD)

The key short term outcomes of these 4 activities are:

• Newcomers are aware of and have access to useful information related to the settlement process
• Newcomers have English language skills sufficient to meet employment and social goals
• Newcomers and their families are able to deal with settlement issues as they emerge
• Newcomers are connected to broader community social networks

A number of different tools are used to determine indicators of success: some of which are mandated by the funder, while others have been developed in-house

Activity numbers are comprehensively logged, and aside from the numeric activity targets, the programs rely on surveying newcomer members on key general aspects of the service provided, including:

• customer service
• relevancy of service
• knowledge of staff members
• physical environment

The YMCA Newcomer Programs overall unit target on any survey is 8 out of 10. This year’s overall actual year to date rating is 8.7 with the highest individual program rating at 9.6.

I would suggest that this is a fulsome and comprehensive measurement system. I realize that some in our sector may be seeking “outcomes” rather than “outputs”. My feeling is that measuring outcomes when working with newcomers, particularly with first-stage settlement services, may be asking the impossible. A good activity measurement system, supported by customer satisfaction surveys, as is the case at the YMCA, may be as good as it gets.

SkillsInternational.ca
This is another great example of a new collaborative effort to address a critical need of immigrants, further along the continuum of service delivery.

Internationally educated professionals continue to be underemployed or unemployed in Canada, of particular concern in Ontario where 60% of Canada's immigrants are received.

In Ontario the unemployment rate for internationally educated professionals is over three times as high as the general population. Less than one-quarter of internationally educated professionals who were employed are working in their exact field, and about half are doing something irrelevant to their field.

SkillsInternational.ca is a web-based tool that unites pre-screened, internationally educated professionals with employers who need their skills. This on-line tool is cost-effective, efficient and, I believe, the first of its kind in Canada. The Waterloo Region District School Board, WIL Employment Connections in London and COSTI Immigrant Services in Toronto, formed a collaborative to take this project from concept to creation.

While on-line searchable résumé databases are not new, a site dedicated exclusively to profiling the skills of Ontario's internationally educated professionals did not previously exist. Agencies across Ontario who work with immigrants to provide connections to the labour market are now able to post the résumés of qualified, screened applicants. Employers can perform a variety of searches based on relevant criteria including skills, experience and education. 

In addition, inadequate interview skills are a major barrier for skilled immigrants entering Canada’s competitive job market

An OTF grant has enabled the creation of a unique interview-practice software program on the Skills International website. The tool is helping foreign-trained professionals across Ontario to develop interview skills appropriate to the Canadian market. 

This new software program engages candidates frequently with the Skills International website, which has the added benefit of providing updated information to prospective employers.

Year 1 projections: 5,000 candidates using the SI site / 500 candidates employed through the system
Year 1 results: 6,500 candidates registered on the system / 900 have secured employment

While registration numbers are a measure of success, the meaningful outcome is 900 employed newcomers.

Pathways to Education, Regent Park, Toronto
The Pathways to Education Program™ is a proven effective model, first created and implemented in Toronto’s Regent Park by the Regent Park Community Health Centre, and I’m pleased that OTF has played a catalytic role since Day One. The goal was to ensure that young people from economically disadvantaged communities achieve their full potential by getting to school, staying in school, graduating and moving on to post-secondary programs.

The program provides four key supports:  Academic tutoring; Social mentoring; Financial support such as free bus tickets tied to attendance, and a bursary for post-secondary education; and Advocacy with teachers and community agencies

The outcomes are measurable and have been groundbreaking. From September 2001 to the present in Regent Park, the program has:

• Enrolled 95% of the eligible high school age youth in Regent Park in the Pathways program
• Reduced the dropout rate from 56% to 10%
• Reduced absenteeism by 50%, and
• Increased post-secondary enrollment from 20% to 80%

Pro-bono research by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has demonstrated a societal return on investment, developing a public-private funding model to support the expansion, and building capacity to support the growth of the program.

Environmental Volunteer Network
Research and experience also tell us how important religious, cultural and sporting institutions are in aiding newcomers to integrate. Getting involved in the life of their community through such an organization, usually as a volunteer, can be the first step for newcomers in integrating into the broader community.

By joining and volunteering in immigrant-friendly organizations such as ethnic congregations or cultural programming, immigrants are able to build important social connections.

The Environmental Volunteer Network is a collaborative effort by OCASI and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, to link social service and settlement agencies with the environmental sector, in order to better enable newcomers to contribute to strengthening Ontario's environment – and to provide new immigrants with valuable opportunities to receive training and volunteer work.

To date, the program has:

• Trained 770 volunteers
• Established a formal network of 23 environmental organizations
• Held a career fair with 28 environmental organizations in attendance
• 14 volunteers found employment in environmental field – an unexpected outcome.

This program has since grown into a much bigger and government-funded initiative: Mentoring to Placement for Environmental Professionals (M2P) Program led by TRCA. It offers mentorship; technical skills workshop; and a 3-to-12 month paid work placement with a host organization.  40 internationally trained environmental professionals are receiving 12 month paid work placements.

Observations and Challenges
I’d like to conclude my remarks by offering some overall observations based on these examples, and building upon our work at the Foundation.

1. The immigrant settlement sector in Ontario is diverse and complex.
2. The challenges in this sector include:
   Limited capacity
   Limited collaboration
   Inadequate Coordination
3. Funders frequently provide term-limited funding, but often look for long-term impacts. Establishing and measuring long-term impacts in this environment is not easy.
4. Different funders have different requirements in terms of application, reporting and impact measurement.

Building on these observations, I believe that governments, policy-makers and funders need to ask:

• Are we realistic in attributing outcomes to a specific initiative?
• Service providers and funders often use different measures – is this constructive?
• Outcome Tracking systems are often cumbersome – are the costs always worth the benefits?
• Who can and should measure what? Is this the responsibility of Funders or Service providers? Should we be looking to fund academics to do the meaningful measurement? Are we realistic in our expectations?
• Is there appropriate collaboration between service providers – and between funders – on these issues?

Now I have asked as number of questions, and I do not expect that we can answer them all in this room today. However, I do feel that we need to keep exploring these answers as we work together to further strengthen the important work of Canada’s immigrant settlement services in the not-for-profit sector.