Media Clipping — February 12, 1999, The Chronicle Herald

Volunteers Stretched to the limit

Can't pick up slack from cuts to services study

By Lois Legge, Staff Reporter

A sharp drop in the hours most Nova Scotia have to volunteer is costing at least $60 million annually in lost services to the poor, elderly and sick, a new study has found.

The study's author says the hundreds of thousands of Nova Scotians who care daily for society's most vulnerable are hardly to blame.

While Nova Scotia has the most volunteers per capita in Canada, they've been stretched to the limit by government cuts and increased demands at their paid jobs.

The study by GPI Atlantic, a non-profit research group, is the first to measure how the volunteer sector is coping with government budget cuts to public services over the past decade.

Its findings were presented to more than 100 representatives of nonprofit and volunteer 13roups who met Thursday in Halifax for a workshop called Volunteers and Community Agencies 1n Crisis

But for those on the front lines, the study's bleak news was fami1iar territory. Exhausted social service workers and volunteers have struggled for years to meet the increasing needs of everyone from poor children to victims of abuse.

Ronald Colman, director of GPI and the report's author, said the loss of volunteer services has compounded the effect of government cutbacks, producing a "substantial erosion of the social safety net for those most at risk"

"If we look at the cuts in (federal and provincial) government social services and income supports alone, and add that to the drop in volunteer services, we find a 30 per cent decline in social services in Nova Scotia in the last few years," he said.

That figure doesn't include the impact of cuts to health care, he added.

Mr. Colman said that more people are volunteering, but they aren't able to devote as many hours, mainly because they're working longer hours at their paid jobs, for firms that expect more of their highly educated employees

In Nova Scotia, 73 per cent of university graduates do some volunteer work.

Since 1987, the number of volunteers in the province has increased by 73,000. But the average volunteer is putting in 25 per cent less time than 10 years ago.

The study, based on a recent Statistic Canada survey, found that a 7.2 per cent decrease translates into an annual $60 million in lost services.

Nationally, volunteer services have declined 4.7 per cent, a loss worth $1.83 billion a year, Mr. Colman said.

He pointed out that in announcing major federal cuts to social programs in 1996, Finance Minister Paul Martin said the government would have to rely more on volunteerism and recognise its importance.

But Mr. Colman said government, both provincial and federal have failed to see volunteerism for the essential service that it is.

The study is the first in Canada to belie the assumption that volunteers could simply pick up the slack, he said.

Non profit groups, which rely on government funding and volunteer, say they too have been taxed to the limit, because of cuts and reduced volunteer hours.

Now they're also competing with charities for scarce volunteer resources and fundraising dollars.

Linda Roberts, multi-service co-ordinator at the Capt. William Spry Community Centre, said a six per cent provincial funding cut to non-profit agencies in 1996 gave the groups a "shock from which they haven't recovered.

"There was the loss of money . . . services merging, downsizing, programs being cancelled and some people had to institute user fees," Ms. Roberts se1d.

"Individuals find out when they actually need our services that we're stretched to the limit and we can't do any more.

"But the general public have no idea that we've sustained funding cuts for more than a decade, the demand has increased dramatically and we're exhausted."

She said lowpaid employees of the agencies are often owed hundreds of hours in overtime or take money out of their own pockets to meet the needs.

WORK DETAIL

Nova Scotians have the highest rate of volunteerism in Canada.

The average Nova Scotia volunteers for three hours 21 minutes per week, compared with a national average of two hours 40 minutes per week.

A total of 73 per cent Nova Scotia university graduates do some volunteer work.

Source: GPI Atlantic