FACS to amalgamate with Kenora-Patricia agency
Michael McKinnon
The family and children’s services agencies for the Rainy River and Kenora-Patricia districts have started work on amalgamating into one new organization.
The move is being made to save money, and all involved are emphasizing that “there will be no reduction in front-line services to clients, or to front-line staff”.
The move will save about $400,000 a year in costs for ‘back-end functions’ like accounting, human resources, payroll, and information technology that are currently being done by both agencies. The new, larger agency will be able to reinvest those savings into services for children.
“When we started this, we entered with some trepidation,” said Bill McGreevey, president of FACS for the Rainy River District board. But a year of discussion among the staffs and boards of FACS, Kenora-Patricia Child and Family Services (KPCFS) and the province’s Ministry of Children and Youth Services have been very positive.
“We are keen to get started” on working out the specifics of the amalgamation, he said. The goal now is to get the deal done by April 1, 2011.
Financial problems
FACS is among the 39 children’s aid societies in Ontario that have been struggling with financial problems since early 2009. (There are 53 agencies altogether.) The specific problems here involved the generally higher costs in the North, a provincial decision to limit ‘infrastructure’ funding to 10.5% of a society’s overall budget, and the high costs of special care services for the neediest youth and children.
That prompted FACS to turn to KPCFS to explore amalgamation. In April, the two boards agreed to a model for making the transition to one unified organization, and submitted it to the province for review. After some back-and-forth with the province, a final process was agreed to last week.
In its acceptance of the proposal, the KPCFS board set one condition: that the new organization would start free of debt and deficit. In other words, the province will be asked to cover the outstanding debt of FACS (projected to be about $900,000 by the end of March, 2011), and to cover the transition costs (projected to range from $450,000 to $900,000).
The province has yet to specifically commit to covering those costs, but Bill Leonard, executive director of KPCFS (and a former manager at the Atikokan office of FACS), said the province was very supportive of this specific proposal, and of the amalgamation of children’s aid societies generally.
“The report of the province’s Commission to Promote Sustainable Child Welfare [indicates] 53 agencies is too many, and that that number has to be reduced,” he said. “Clearly, it is keen to see services amalgamate, and that has been the Ministry’s direction [since the latest financial crisis started].”
By voluntarily entering into an amalgamation, and in the process resolve what appears to have become a long-term financial problem for children’s services in the Rainy River district, the two agencies expect the province will pave the way for this amalgamation with special funding.
More than that was achieved by entering into a voluntary process, said McGreevey. “This way, we have retained as much control over the end product as we could.”
The transition
The single biggest transition cost is likely to be in legal and labour costs. Leonard said a labour attorney the organizations consulted estimated those costs could reach to as much as $500,000.
The staffs of the two agencies are represented by different unions, and, although no full-time staff or management will lose their jobs, at least four will see their positions changed. Both agencies have an executive director, finance manager, payroll supervisor and accounts payable head. Details on how they will transition to the new organization are still being worked out, although some area settled: Leonard will be ED for the new organization, while Vic Nowak, executive director of Rainy River’s FACS, will become director of service for the unified agency.
Various teams are working on specific details of the transition. A governance committee will develop terms for forming a new board, by-laws and incorporation. Other teams will work on each of the areas of service (children’s, families, resources (e.g., residential services)), as well as on human resources, information technology and finance. The teams include staff from all levels of both agencies, as well as foster parents and community partners.
McGreevey noted that FACS is an integrated agency, which provides additional service above and beyond those mandated by the province in child welfare legislation. Among them are children’s mental health services and volunteer coordination. The new agency will continue those services in the Rainy River District. (In the Kenora-Patricia district, separate organizations offer those services.)
A name for the new agency has yet to be considered. Once amalgamation is complete, its staff will number 250 full-time and about 100 casual, and its total budget will be about $17 million.
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