FST’S EQUITY AND INCLUSION JOURNEY
Margaret Hancock's speech at AGM 2010
Each year, the AGM provides a wonderful opportunity to reflect with friends, staff, volunteers and colleagues on an aspect of our shared work at FST. This year we are focusing on FST’s journey towards equity and inclusion. Since our beginning almost 100 years ago, we have been engaged with, actually seized with, and challenged by trying to make our programs and services responsive to the ever-changing needs of the ever-changing population of the city of Toronto. As a full service organization, FST has always linked individual need and social conditions, creating innovative programming and practicing advocacy.
It has been and continues to be a fascinating journey towards this most complex of goals which we now call equity and inclusion. Beginning with issues of class, then race, gender, ability and sexual orientation, we are constantly evolving along a continuum towards equity and inclusion. Tonight we want to take you with us on a piece of that journey, starting with a big sweeping look at our first 96 years, then focusing on some current programs with innovative responses to people’s needs. You will hear about our David Kelley services and programs for the LGBTQ community and those affected by HIV/AIDS; you will see a wonderful short film about a client who is in our OPTIONS program; and finally you will hear from people experience a piece of theatre presented by young people in our ………. Program. So . . . it is my pleasure to get us started with a look at FST’s history with equity and inclusion.
From our beginning in 1914 as the Neighbourhood Workers’ Association, with a deep concern for the well-being of families in Toronto, we have been rooted in community work in neighbourhoods, responding to the changing needs of immigrants and newcomers. For the first several decades, we provided services including welfare and food during the depression, as well as vacations in the fresh air outside the city for children, mothers and seniors.
As the shape of the family has changed, so has our work. In the 1950s, we began our focus on family counselling and group work. In the 1960s, we changed our name from Neighbourhood Workers’ Association to Family Service Association. In the 70s, we established the Social Action Unit and launched the Employee Assistance Program.
In the 1980s and 90s, we began to respond to Toronto’s increasingly diverse population by hiring staff with language skills to work with specific communities. We had been working with the Italian, Portuguese and Spanish-speaking communities for a long time; but with the newer immigrant communities, we quickly learned that it was not enough to have one person with language skills, that this was tokenism. Communities wanted FST’s services in general and the organization as a whole to be responsive to the community. This dynamic tension and challenge continues to this day and is one of the key issues for us to address through our number one strategic direction which is to enhance the accessibility and responsiveness of programs and services.
In the 1990s, FST received some very serious challenges from ethno-racial communities who experienced FST as unresponsive. At that time, we were largely a counselling organization without active community engagement. We declined to be part of United Way training on multiculturalism. We thought we could do it on our own. Thankfully, Paul Zarnke, then the executive director, heard the call from the community and dedicated FST to being engaged. Each branch office committed to working with two local communities to fill staff vacancies. We began reaching out to the Tamil, Iranian and Somali communities, communities of refugees who had experienced the trauma of civil war, and interestingly, communities with whom we are still engaged. But, as you know, counselling is not part of the culture of these communities and could only address a few needs, so FST recognized the need to revitalize community development as a means of being responsive to greater needs and the Community Action Unit was established.
This initiative brought further challenges. It was difficult to figure out which communities to support. Some communities did not want to work with us, preferring to provide services themselves. Others appreciated the usefulness of a mainstream organization which could bridge the multiple cultures present in an ethnic community. As you can imagine, this was a time of intense challenge and learning for FST, not without setbacks and pitfalls; but slowly trust for FST grew. Funders began to look to us to be the trustee for emerging community organizations such as Djinta Besha, the Somali settlement services organization; and this is a role which continues to this day with other community organizations. With Djinta Besha, we tried very hard to have a trustee relationship which was not colonial and supervisory but rather one of mentoring. This took 10 years to build. One of the enduring lessons of equity and inclusion work is that it takes a long time.
In this same period, a coalition of agencies serving ethno-racial and cultural communities, including Chinese Family Services, Abrigo, COSTI and Kenn Richard now of Native Child and Family Services of Toronto, challenged the United Way to give them some of FST’s funding because FST was not doing a good enough job serving their communities. Eventually we became allies and supported them in their requests for funding, but we continue to face the challenge of equity and inclusion in our work every day.
Also in the 1980s and 90s, our OPTIONS program was created, based on a model of person-directed planning. OPTIONS staff work with people labeled with intellectual disabilities so that they can live a full life in their communities and they work with the communities to become more inclusive. This model lends itself to working with diverse communities because OPTIONS clients can purchase services within their own community, reducing barriers including those of language and sexual orientation. This program and its related program called Passport for people with intellectual disabilities who have left school, have had a profound effect in terms of equity and inclusion for people labeled with intellectual disabilities and their families. The person-directed planning model is spreading in the developmental services sector and we are adapting it to help seniors live at home longer, again with the challenge to and opportunity for communities to become more inclusive.
A further challenge and opportunity came to FST in the mid-1990s when the Toronto Counselling Centre for Lesbians and Gays asked FST if it would consider a merger. At that time, FST was located on Wellesley Street, in the gay village, with a commitment to work with the LGBTQ community but not really doing anything. Thankfully we said yes to the merger invitation and David Kelley Services began in August 1996; but with this merger came some very serious challenges to FST around equity and inclusion which have transformed the organization in the areas of policy and governance, training and learning and advocacy and continue to challenge us to this day. With DKS, the anti-oppression policy was created and the board undertook an extensive access and equity workplan; LGBTQ people became board members along with members of more diverse communities; and services were delivered by and for the LGBTQ communities.
Our inclusive definition of family was created which has led to our advocacy on the issue of same sex marriage, our intervention in the three parent family case and our embrace of Family Day. We stood by our principles on the definition of family to the extent of withdrawing our membership from Family Service Ontario, our umbrella association and accrediting body, when they refused to adopt an inclusive definition of family or to advocate on behalf of LGBTQ people around same sex marriage.
This voyage brings us to the present where our commitment to equity and inclusion is evident throughout our strategic plan, in the vision, mission and values, and in the strategic directions. Equity and inclusion is at the core of our work every day. We recognize that a state of equity and inclusion is where we want the world to be; dealing with oppression is what we do as part of getting to that state. FST is fully committed to continuing this journey towards greater equity and inclusion. Thank you for being on the path with us.
