Domain 11: Accessible Community Service and Social Enterprise

“Diversity is a fact. Equity is a choice. Inclusion is an action. Belonging is an outcome.”

– Arthur Chan, diversity, equity, and inclusion strategist and behavioural scientist[1]

 

Adults with disabilities require varying levels of community support, including advocacy and wayfinding for income support programs, connections to adaptive technologies, securing transportation, and finding and maintaining housing, as well as assistance with paying rent or mortgage installments.  Unfortunately, many nonprofit service providers struggle to meet the demand for accessible services, as clients face large wait-lists or poorly suited programs that are not capable of providing personalized support.[2] Mental health services in particular often fail to reach those who live on the margins of society.  Community-based organizations, typically non-profits dependent on a combination of government contracts and funding, as well as philanthropic donations, have been facing a long-term structural ‘social deficit’ as donations and provincial decline grants decline in many regions in Canada, and specifically in Alberta.

Despite these hardships, innovations in community services, including technology-enabled innovations, are helping ease aspects of community access. Navigate for Kids, for example, is an app developed by the Calgary SCOPE Society to enable easier access to “disability related resources for families with children and youth (up to 18 years of age) with developmental disabilities in Calgary to help parents, guardians, educators, and professionals find supports specific to the child’s needs.”[3]

SPOTLIGHT: Helpseeker Technologies

At the intersection of social innovation, tech innovation, and community service lies a Calgarian success story harnessing the tech space for the greater social good. HelpSeeker Technologies, a B Corp social enterprise, helps community members privately browse thousands of services, programs, resources, helplines for support in mental health, parenting, addictions, domestic violence, affordable housing, recreation, and more.[4] By enabling direct user access, navigation and understanding of nationwide datasets (over 250,000 listings just in Canada), HelpSeeker is removing the gatekeeping function of social service and health providers, whether nonprofit, private or government-based.  As Dr. Matt Parker, Health Sector Lead at fellow AI-driven Calgary venture AltaML, notes, “Our goal in developing this technology was to disrupt the traditional way of running social needs assessments that is very costly and time-consuming.”[5] To continually improve and learn, the client service inputs create a feedback loop and, thus, puts the power back into the end-user, those in barriered or vulnerable populations, populations whose challenges were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

 This spotlight is adapted from an unpublished piece by colleague Megan Davidson for the Centre for Social Impact Technology.

 

To further explore Domain 11: Accessible Community Service and Social Enterprise, click to explore the sub-domains below:

Accessibility and Social Innovation

Social Enterprise

 

  1. Arthur Chan. (2020, September 8). LinkedIn Post on Profile Page. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/arthurpchan_diversity-is-a-fact-equity-is-a-choice-activity-6709122719918755840-WU76/ ↵
  2. Aaron Turpin, Michael Shier, and Kate Scowan. (2021). Assessing the Social Impact of Mental Health Service Accessibility by a Nonprofit Social Enterprise: A Mixed-Methods Case Study. Canadian Journal of Nonprofit and Social Economy Research, Vol 12:1, pp. 82 – 106. https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/107191/1/Shier_Assessing%20the%20Social%20Impact%20of%20Mental%20Health%20Service%20Accessibility.pdf ↵
  3. Navigate for Kids. Home [website]. https://navigateforkids.com/ ↵
  4. HelpSeeker. Home [website]. https://helpseeker.org ↵
  5. HelpSeeker Inc. (2021, May 5). HelpSeeker Technologies to Launch Canada’s First Social Sector Digital Decision Support Platform. Newswire CA. https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/helpseeker-technologies-to-launch-canada-s-first-social-sector-digital-decision-support-platform-863974290.html ↵

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Accessing Canada: A Scan of Issues, Trends, System Dynamics and Innovations in Accessibility Copyright © by Institute for Community Prosperity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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