Policy Meeting Minutes January 21, 2004

Present: Ernie, Ed, Sandy, Scott, Leslie, Leah, Kyla, Laura

1. Adopt minutes from Oct. 8, 2003: On the Spectrum website www.spectrumsociety.org there is a link to The Policy Committee. Once you get to this link there is another link that will take you to the policy meeting minutes, please share this with your teams and encourage them to review the minutes.

2. Budget:  

As stated in the Policy Meeting Minutes from Oct. 8, 2003:

Treasury Board completed a review of the MCFD three year budget plan and reduced planned cuts by $110 Million.  The cut to community living was reduced from 17% to 8%.

Strategies to meet this 8% reduction include:

	Voluntary Cost Reduction Strategy – agencies have been given more flexibility to restructure services – finding ways to reduce the cost of services for those people interested in change.
	Collective Bargaining – MCFD has set a budget target for funding reductions to come from the current collective bargaining with unionized agencies.
	Compensation Overpayments: Agencies that received Munro Agreement funding are being requested to return a significant portion of their funding because the formula for funding benefits has been changed.

Service providers will implement a voluntary plan so long as they were given authority to do changes in their own way. Spectrum is participating in the Voluntary Cost Reduction Strategy, proposing to find savings of 5% on an annualized basis.  Our strategies include developing a supported family living program, a cluster housing program and a shared day program activities program.  Spectrum requested restructuring funds of $230,000 to assist us making these changes.

The ministry did an arbitrary cut and decided to cut the sick days throughout a calendar year down to 10 days. This was implemented on September 1, 2003. Due to this cut some agencies are unable to follow through with their voluntary cuts; this is not the case with Spectrum.

Service Providers prepared an alternate proposal to Ministry plans that will accomplish  cuts to the budget to meet 2003-04 and 2004-05 budget targets.  It was approved by the Ministry and Treasury Board on Dec. 18, 2003. The proposal states that there will be an across the board cut of 1.75%. With 0.75% cuts in Jan/04 and then another 1% in Apr/04, this means $80,000/yr for Spectrum. This is as well as all other savings (cluster housing, family care, and group activities).

A risk involved for some agencies that they can not implement these changes without reducing hours to people we support. Spectrum is finding other ways so that we don’t have to cut hours.

In the past couple of years Spectrum has been trying to increase the sustainability of contracts. Referring to the way a contract is budgeted for wages, which is currently $15.75/hr for new contracts. Instead of creating a format for each individual program, Spectrum was given a formula for wages to apply. This formula does not work for some of our programs so in order for the program to remain sustainable, funds for wages from one program may get shifted to another program in order for each program to have enough budgeted money for the current wages. By doing this it is possible that there may be a wage increase in March 2004.

Anne-Maria and Aaron will be meeting with each team. They have already met with Kira and Jennifer’s team and this has been a positive step for all involved.

3. Privacy Policy Draft

Provincial government passed a new Personal Information Protection Act on Jan. 1, 2004.

This now affects all businesses. They must have a privacy policy drafted and a privacy officer. This is to protect people’s personal information such as age, date of birth, ethnicity… This will affect the way Spectrum will conduct any new employees and also what information is to be kept by Spectrum.

Questions posed: Are we obligated to filter through what was given information and what was asked for?

            -need to stop getting information that has no relevance to our business purposes.

How long do you keep all receipts?

            -for some people we support all receipts are kept (groceries, coffee, haircuts…) how long is necessary to keep all of these receipts?

How liable are you in the community?

            -if you are out in the community and a potential friend asks how old the person you work with is.

There is already a policy in place for confidentiality. It is possible to work out a script with the family or your staff team as to what is a reasonable amount of information that can be shared. (She/he is in their 30’s and enjoys going to movies)

This policy will include staff and people Spectrum supports.

Spectrum will also be looking into what records are kept for people that we no longer support as well as all of the previous years of income taxes. Any of this information should be kept securely at the person’s home, the office or at Spectrum’s secure storage area.

Over next year there will be privacy audits completed in a number of areas to identify areas where we need to do more work to ensure compliance with the privacy legislation. We want to build on ways to ensure people’s privacy. Records are only given out if prior consent is granted or we are required by law such as for WCB, Revenue Canada and Employment Canada.

The privacy officer at Spectrum is Susan Kurliak. She’s been to a few workshops recently on such matters and all questions or requests for information should be directed to her.  Her email address is privacy@spectrumsociety.org

Houses should keep telephone numbers in a more private place and not give out phone numbers to people you don’t know.

The policy committee passed the Draft Policy for Privacy, will review in approximately one year.

4. Emails Pay stubs

If you want your pay stubs emailed to your email account, write to paystub@spectrumsociety.org . Please remember that with this option you will no longer receive any pay stub inserts so please check on the Spectrum website under the Pay stubs Inserts link. Trying to use same database to send out the inserts as is used by pay stubs but it is not set up for random emails.

Newsletters are on the website as well.

5. Employment Standards Review

The document is now on the Spectrum website. Please have your teams review it and give feedback. The feedback must be in by Jan. 30, 2004. http://www.spectrumsociety.org/policy/emp.standards.review.htm

Government is reviewing standards around personal care attendants, in particular, a 24 hour shift, asleep night and live in home support. They are being compared to a sitter. Gaps and inadequacies outlined for personal care attendants are no overtime and home care agencies with a 24 hour shift get an 8 hour rest period with a maximum $80/day. The last collective agreement banned the 24 hour shift.

	Change definitions of positions
	Options for minimum wage
	Options for hours of work and overtime
	Options for breaks and rest periods

There may be a public information session in Feb/04

Spectrum is trying to define this more by having new roommates have sublet agreement instead of a roommate and anything to do with Spectrum.

We may need a clause stating the overnight staff person does do a certain amount of support and should be paid accordingly.

6. Should there be a generic email house address?

There is the issue of people using it for non-related work issues and information being deleted before all people read it.

Instead, the option would be to write in the communication log that there is information about the subject and let them know how to find it. The staff would still have to initial communication log once they have read the information.

7. Timing of pay increases

Someone who had been on relief then got a permanent position. The pay increase was timed to when she started the permanent position even though she had done relief for four months. We need more clarity around this issue in the policy manual. For relief to get a pay increase they must work for one year or 1000 hours, which ever comes later, but what happens when this person moves to a permanent position? Do we still hold hours from relief for wage increments accountable?

8. Turnover/employment stats

204 employees in 2002 - 198 total employees in 2003.  Currently 160 employees active.

10 people on leave (maternity, long term disability, travel)

30 people left (10 moved, 10 in other jobs in the city, 10 were asked to leave or worked out departure)

30 new hires and all new hires are still working for Spectrum

This is good for employees to know. The low turn over rate gives better working conditions for staff and people we support (quality of care)

There have been fewer postings over the past year. Years past we had 80, then 50, last year we had only 35 job postings.

Vacancies/postings that have come up have been filled temporarily to prepare for upcoming changes.

Next meeting Wednesday April 21, 2004, 4pm-7pm at the Spectrum office.