City council last month passed a motion that could result in a dozen Community Living Elgin employees losing their jobs. The agency delivers the Ontario Early Years Child and Family Centres program, known as EarlyON and their contract with the city expires at the end of the year. Instead of one agency, the city is looking at three to serve St. Thomas and Elgin. That could mean layoff notices, warns Darren Connolly, chairman of the agency’s board of directors.
Connolly says the agency wasn’t consulted on the operational change and received just three hours notice of the report coming to council. The report and its recommendation from Teresa Sulowski, supervisor of children’s services, was approved in just 38 seconds with no questions or comments from any member of council.
Community Living Elgin could be forced to pay out as much as $100,000 in termination pay and Connolly says employees are devastated.
While many organizations and social service agencies are centralizing the delivery of services, St. Thomas is moving away from that model for the EarlyON program. Sulowski is proposing to “divide the service delivery area into three distinct zones, East, West and Central, and that one service provider be dedicated to each specific zone.” Connolly questions the logic.
He says, “We are disappointed in the lack of communication, and that our employees found out about this as it went to council. This is not the way we typically share devastating news with our valued employees. And we have still to receive formal notice of contract termination from the staff at the city. We read the outcome in the council minutes.”
In her report Sulowski notes in 2019, “these programs saw over 18,600 visits by children 0-6 years of age, and over 12,400 visits by parents/caregivers.”
