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Taking Charge! was intended to serve as a facilitator or catalyst for a community response to chronic unemployment. The target group, single parents (mostly women) on income assistance, faces critical barriers to employment, by virtue of child care responsibilities and low levels of education and work experience.

Partnerships in Taking Charge! and other Strategic Initiatives in Canada are modeled after the Job Training Partnership Act in the United States. The key idea is that a partnership approach is most effective in creating the training and employment opportunities needed by this target clientele. The idea of partnership also involves that of "leverage." The assets of a single organization can "lever" additional resources from partner organizations, leading to enhanced impacts for clients.

One key informant observed that the idea of "shared risk" is inherent in the notion of partnership. Partnerships create ventures that have a better chance of success because risk is spread across several partners. This idea is useful in assessing the nature and success of the partnerships created by Taking Charge!.

5.1 The Role of Taking Charge! in Establishing Partnerships

Several partnerships are crucial to the success of Taking Charge!, including:

• Private firms are expected to find work or offer job experience for Taking Charge! clients. Clearly, a close relationship with potential employers is very important for meeting the Program's goals.
• Community organizations, especially business and various social service, volunteer, and non-profit agencies all offer resources to complement and support the goals of Taking Charge!. Most often these are training services formalized as a contract. These training contracts allow Taking Charge! to expand the range of services available to clients.
• Provincial departments, especially the Departments of Family Service and Education and Training, serve the same clients as Taking Charge!. At the minimum, close cooperation is needed to ensure a cost-effective response to income assistance clients gaining economic independence. Beyond these two departments, collateral provincial departments are being drawn together to begin a community "wellness" model. For this client group, the Departments of Health and Justice are also critically important.

5.2 Partnerships with the Business Community Have Lagged

The fact that we had no private employers to interview in the formative evaluation shows that Taking Charge! had not yet created this partnership. A central recommendation of that report was that Taking Charge! needs to create a business advisory council. Work on this is reportedly continuing. Management has identified a preliminary list of potential members, and a presentation to the Chamber of Commerce has been planned.²³

Several larger employers (e.g., Standard Aero) are reportedly also involved in designing training and placement programs. In the past Taking Charge! has created similar ventures with the garment sector and home care providers. These projects have all worked, to a degree, but it is accurate to state that they have yet to become a consistent way to create jobs for the clients.

The most important function for employers is to hire the graduates placed by the program. Few are involved with Taking Charge! before being approached to accept training graduates. Also, many trainees are placed by the training service provider. We are unable to estimate the exact number placed by Taking Charge!, training service providers, or who found jobs on their own. It is likely that many employers would be aware of some of their recent hires who were income assistance clients who recently completed a course, but they would have had contact with the training service provider and not with Taking Charge!.

Aside from a few pilot programs such as with We Care (a home care service provider) or TanJay (garment manufacturer), few employers define a training program with Taking Charge! to meet their future needs. Most respond to enquiries from the Taking Jobs! component of Taking Charge! or the marketing by a training service provider to fill positions in their companies.

Table 27 shows the number of trainees in work placement by the largest employers who have engaged a client of Taking Charge! or its service providers. Based on the Taking Charge! database, it seems that no employer has hired more than nine trainees in the work placement program. Most have engaged only one trainee. Note that this table presents the work placement program. We have no way of tracing where Taking Charge! graduates end up working. Taking Charge! placed eight of its clients in their own volunteer program. The ISM placements for Taking Charge! are the result of a University of Manitoba Network Administrator course.

Table 28 shows that training service providers and Taking Charge! placed 563 clients with 417 employers. Training service providers placed 86 percent of the clients (486/563).

In summary, employers have a passive relationship with Taking charge! They respond when a training service provider or Taking Charge! approaches them with an offer for a work placement. Little analysis appears to have been completed by management on the outcomes of these work placements, and we do not know whether they have translated into permanent jobs.²⁴

The delay in creating close contacts with the business community is a critical gap in the programming options for Taking Charge!. In our interviews with management and staff, some key informants had unrealistic views about what business could and should do in hiring Taking Charge! trainees. Three or four remarked that businesses need to recognize their responsibility and "hire 50 graduates of our programs." Overall, Taking Charge! management is keenly aware of the need to create viable contacts with the business community.

The most effective way to increase contact with industry is to make strategic business appointments to the Board. Besides opening direct lines to industry, increased business representation on the Board would offer Taking Charge! important perspectives and impart additional private-sector values to the organization. These perspectives would complement the social service background that many staff members bring to the organization. In part, the failure of this form of partnership may result from the fact that many on the staff have little experience with the business community, have few contacts, and may be intimidated to take a proactive approach.

The delay in creating close contacts with the business community cannot be assigned to the Board or management of Taking Charge!. Since appointment to the Board is the prerogative of the federal and provincial governments, specifically the responsible Ministers, it is at this level that this lack may be remedied. The creation of a business advisory panel is within the purview of the Board and management, but assistance by senior members of the two responsible provincial departments would be helpful.

5.3 The Role and Contribution of Training Service Providers

Training service providers have become the "agents" of Taking Charge! and recruit, assess, train, and report on outcomes for many clients. Employment facilitators and Taking Charge! management told us that without service providers doing this, Taking Charge! could never meet the demand for training and services. Table 29 shows how employability assessments and training plans are created for income assistance clients in Taking Charge!.

Recall that one of the original objectives was for Taking Charge! to assess and prepare an individual job plan for each client. From Table 18, we find that 2,058 clients have been assessed and 1,462 have participated in training programs offered by service providers. This and Table 29 suggest that 146 have received an assessment and plan from assessed by neither Taking Charge! nor the service provider (presumably an E&IA counselor); and for 541; the service provider completed the assessment and plan.

The original intent that Taking Charge! have initial client contact, perform an assessment and then create an individualized job plan for all clients is not happening. The goal to generate high employment numbers required Taking Charge! to "out-source" the assessment and planning process to external contractors. Between 25 percent and 30 percent of all Taking Charge! clients have neither an assessment nor a plan.

The training "industry" in Manitoba comprises both for-profit human resource firms and non-profit organizations that may or may not have a record of training income assistance recipients. Many of these training organizations have had long histories of funding from federal and provincial governments - others recently emerged in response to the funding available from Taking Charge!. None of this is especially problematic or unusual. Taking Charge! inherited a well developed and well-connected group of training providers. The fact that Taking Charge! did not have a developed training function meant that these external contractors became and remain the primary vehicles for successful labour market outcomes for this program. In essence, Taking Charge! has become a funder for training services directed to single parents on income assistance, as opposed to offering training services in-house.

No question exists about the importance of third-party training service providers. Without these contracts, Taking Charge! could never have delivered training and education services to its clients. Essentially, to meet its target for serving clients and placing trainees into jobs, Taking Charge! had to contract this service. Further, it has contracted recruiting, employability assessment, job planning, and follow-up to the point where many Taking Charge! clients receiving assessments have these services performed outside the program.

It is very hard to offer a firm estimate of the number of Taking Charge! clients who are assessed by training service providers. Taking Charge! believes the number is only 24 percent, while information from service providers indicate that it is 37 percent. The fact that some contracts now explicitly include the requirement that service providers assess and create plans demonstrates that Taking Charge! recognizes that it cannot maintain the number of clients and complete assessments.

Training service providers are also largely responsible for defining the overall direction of training within the program. Until very recently, training service providers would propose programs they believed to be valuable. Initially, Taking Charge! accepted most of the proposals provided they involved training the client groups. The Board still would request changes, but by and large most proposals that met an apparent need received funding.

Lately, Taking Charge! management and staff have subjected proposals to closer scrutiny. Proponents are expected to outline what client needs will be met and how success will be achieved. The proposal review process has tightened. Employment facilitators now have previous performance to assess a contractor's likely performance. Also, proposals are sometimes (but not always) assessed against occupational and labour market projections. Finally, certain types of courses, such as basic word processing or basic computer skills, are not being funded, partly because the in-house computer lab can cover this and partly because clients often get these skills as part of a basic educational upgrading.

What Taking Charge! has yet to do is to take a more proactive role in defining the training agenda. Several key informants, including Taking Charge! staff and management, stated that Taking Charge! should determine client needs and call for tenders for the programming needed.

Some respondents expressed ambivalence about the relationship between Taking Charge! and the service providers. On the one hand, the excellence and professionalism of some trainers was widely acknowledged. These trainers, who are well known within Taking Charge!, Education and Training, and Family Services, are seen as offering the taxpayer excellent value for money. Several key informants suggested that contracts could be let directly to these organizations.

Also, some key informants questioned whether decisions made on funding or renewal were always at arms length. By having community organizations serving directly on the Board and acting as service providers, Taking Charge! has the benefit of obtaining high levels of access to its target community. However, the appearance of favouritism may exist when Taking Charge! awards service contracts to organizations that have representation on the Board. It is important to note that the vast majority of funds allocated by Taking Charge! are to organizations with no direct representation on its Board. Also, the evidence suggests that Taking Charge! has received value for money from the contracts awarded to organizations with Board representation.²⁵

5.4 The Role and Contribution of the Voluntary Sector

Community and non-profit organizations offer valuable insights and experience into the client group and may have programs that are immediately applicable to clients. It makes sense to develop close relationships with community organizations to accelerate the training opportunities open to Taking Charge! clients. This relationship with the community may be expressed through Board membership, informal contacts with community groups, joint ventures, and joint funding of training and other support activities.

At the outset, Taking Charge! encountered a cool reception from the non-profit and community-based organizations. Its creation represented a perturbation in the established funding relationships. Many existing "players," offering third-party training and service to the target group, saw the new agency as a rival for funding. Some groups quickly adapted and realized that Taking Charge! would become an important source of revenue. Several non-profit groups with no history of training also created programs to serve this client group and received funding from Taking Charge!²⁶

In our interviews with community organizations we discovered the following:

• Some vestiges of that rivalry persist today, but it has dissipated considerably.
• The relationships with the "traditional" non-profit community remain undeveloped. By traditional non-profit organizations we mean United Way funded agencies that serve this clientele, social agencies such as Winnipeg Child and Family Services, and other agencies that offer services to lower income Winnipeg families. We found a low level of awareness of, and contact with Taking Charge!, among these organizations.
• Interviews with various key informants reveal that Taking Charge! has made few ongoing contacts with social services agencies and other organizations that can offer collateral support to training clients. As one key informant put it, (Taking Charge!) is not an agency that many community groups talk about. Another key informant stated that Taking Charge! should strengthen its relationships among the "alternately funded non-profit sector." Alternately funded means organizations that derive income from sources other than training contracts.

5.5 Relationship with Government

As mentioned in several places earlier in this report, Taking Charge! has had uneven relationships with provincial departments and other programs. In part, Taking Charge! was positioned as a unique portfolio of interventions and initial efforts sought to ensure that it operated as an independent agency. The joint federal-provincial Task Group in 1994 developed a detailed program model as part of the planning for Taking Charge!. The Taking Charge! Board elected to adopt a separate approach and used the initial year to refine the structure and operation of the Program. This reflects a decision by the Board to make Taking Charge! clearly "not government" and thereby encourage income assistance clients to participate.

Taking Charge! funds a range of programs offered by non-profit groups that also offer services to the provincial government. The process of defining roles and responsibilities for creating and managing employment enhancement measures has been complex and contributed to an initially difficult relationship between Taking Charge! and various provincial programs.

Fortunately this relationship is improving. With the co-location of an Employment and Income Assistance office within the Taking Charge! facility, clients now have immediate access to Department of Family Services counselors. Taking Charge! management and personnel from the Departments of Family Services and Education and Training are starting to meet to coordinate services.

A key lesson is that new initiatives such as Taking Charge! take time to define, especially if configured as a non-profit agency with an independent Board. While this approach fits with the ethos of using non governmental delivery mechanisms, it also requires additional attention to synchronize the governmental and non-governmental systems. Another key lesson is that government needs to take a more active hand in the planning and delivery of services. Taking Charge! has occurred simultaneously with Making Welfare Work, the creation of a single tier of income assistance,²⁷ and the devolution of training and labour market services from the federal to the provincial governments. Taking Charge! could have used increased connection with government to help coordinate training services.

At the outset of the program, Taking Charge! had a close relationship with the federal government at the senior departmental and political level. The first Director of Operations for Taking Charge! was seconded from Human Resources and Development Canada. Further, as signatory to the agreement, the federal government made appointments to the Board.

The federal government continues to attend meetings and participate in the planning and evaluation process, but interactions with the provincial government are much more important to the operations of Taking Charge!.

5.6 Impact of the Program on the Labour Market (Displacement)

Job training programs have the potential to displace regular workers. This occurs because the recently trained income assistance clients may be offered to private employers with a wage subsidy. Further, these trainees may continue to receive various benefits and can afford to work for lower wages.²⁸ The evidence on job displacement remains largely anecdotal, since few employers would respond affirmatively that they had laid off regular employees. In Manitoba, the recent growth in the economy makes job displacement from provincial training programs unlikely.

According to the Follow-up Survey, Taking Charge! places about 37 percent of its clients into full-time employment and 17 percent into part-time employment (8 percent full-time equivalency) for an effective employment rate of 45 percent. Employment Connections places 44 percent of clients in full-time and 20 percent in part-time work for an effective employment rate of 54 percent. These programs have about the same number of clients each year (950); therefore, we expect that in the last fiscal year, Taking Charge! added 428 new employees and Employment Connections added 513 new workers to the Manitoba economy. These are high-side estimates, since some of these workers may be working full-time but in transitory occupations or on short-term contracts.

Over 1995-1998 (since June) the Manitoba economy added 22,000 new jobs to the economy and had the second lowest unemployment rate in Canada (5.7 percent behind Alberta's 5.5 percent).²⁹ In the last year (since June 1997), Manitoba has added 6,000 new jobs.

In this economic context, it is unlikely that the activities of job training programs have displaced regular workers. More than likely these new workers have been welcome. Displacement in the United States occurs in certain urban and regional economies such as New York City. It is most unlikely to occur in upper midwestern states where unemployment is currently running at well under 3 percent and is measured at 0 percent in some centres. The issue in these areas is not displacement, but whether government needs to spend any money on job training since employers are more than willing to train to get workers.

We had anticipated that the employer survey would offer some insight into deployment of graduates of the programs. We were unable to give employers graduate identities as part of the questionnaire.³⁰ A generic question that simply asked whether new hires had been used to replace regular workers seemed unviable and pointless without being able to identify previous income assistance clients in the employer's workforce.

Accordingly, we conclude that job displacement in Winnipeg as a result of the Taking Charge! program is unlikely.

5.7 Summary and observations

Considerable variation exists in the quality of partnerships that Taking Charge! has with the business community, community organizations, and government. Most important is that Taking Charge! has not forged links with the business community. Considering the evidence from the evaluations of the Job-Training Partnership Act in the United States that show the importance of partnerships with the private sector, this lack is the most important partnership deficiency of Taking Charge!. Recent efforts to increase the involvement of business are promising and need to have the highest priority for the organization.

By contrast, Taking Charge! has very close relationships with community organizations, especially those that are training providers. Largely this relationship exists because Taking Charge! is a source of funding for these organizations. However, Taking Charge! does not have close relationships with community organizations that are not under contract. In this sense the networking circle for the organization is restricted. This limits the program in joint venturing with other organizations and developing a fuller range of partnerships that may benefit clients.

Relationships with provincial government are improving after an initial period of poor cooperation. Cooperation and joint planning are increasing and this is drawing the program closer to the job training and assistance system in Manitoba.

Footnotes

23	Report to the Board, May 1998 and Strategic Planning, April, 26, 1998.
24	This is an important task. We are not able to determine whether respondents to the Follow-up Survey or those listed in the Taking Charge! database as being employed are on a work placement or are employed.
25	Taking Charge! did have their conflict of interest procedures reviewed by legal counsel.
26	We confirmed this representation of the initial relationship between Taking Charge! and the non-profit community with key informants in Taking Charge!, government, and community organizations.
27	Until recently, Manitoba had a two-tier income assistance program. The larger urban areas such as Winnipeg administered income assistance to single adults (with provincial grants), while the province administered income assistance to families and single parents. These two tiers are being merged in a single delivery system, only in Winnipeg.
28	This problem is arising in the United States. "Many on welfare compete successfully for low wage jobs that might have otherwise gone to the working poor not on welfare.... Although they are coming off welfare, many have the advantage of a year or more of child care subsidies and transportation allowances..... The displacement issue shows up most vividly in the programs that send people out, ostensibly for training, to do tasks without pay that once were done by regular employees who have their wages cut or their hours shortened." New York Times, April 1, 1997, p. A1.
29	Canadian Economic Observer, July 1998, Statistics Canada, Cat. no. 11-010-XPB.
30	See Section 7 and Appendix 2, Volume II.