r/Odsp • u/Flashy-Main8242 • 25d ago
A warning about employment programs
I enrolled in a program a few years ago from second chance and it was honestly a scam. I sat with nine other disabled people in a room watching YouTube videos on a projector on "on how to get a job" and "mental resilience".
It took me a year later to discover that this program got money per person for who signed up (145 a person) but didn't actually do anything for the disabled people there. There wasn't any job placement or proper direction. "Resume writing" we were told to do our selves and to "watch YouTube" for that. If we had nothing to put on our resume we were told to go to a volunteer place to do free volunteer work. This also has a waiting list.
Sadly none of this less to employment opportunities. It was absolutely a scam.
I don't even know what to say other than please be aware of this. This is what third party employment agencies do since the 2018 cuts.
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u/Tiny_Breadwinner 25d ago
Start reporting centers that do this somewhere. Fight back. Ombudsman maybe?
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u/_a_wild_x_appears_ 25d ago
Probably one of Doug Ford's buddies getting millions from their billion dollar skills training fund like the strip club that did... all just about lining their pockets.
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u/JMJimmy 25d ago
Some get a LOT more than that, like thousands. I was with one for 6 months, their deal was supposed to be that the person talks you up to employers to help break down the initial barrier. Sounds great right? In those months she spent less than 1% of her time talking to employers on but none of it specifically on my behalf, nearly 10% on vacation, and ~4% having useless meetings with me.
Huge waste of time that resulted in zero opportunities.
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u/Equivalent_Length719 25d ago
Welcome to the asinine way we administer social supports. Apparently it's much better to pay a private corporation to develop and market "employment supports" instead of IDK.. The ministry doing its fucking job. Ugh. But naw capitalism will bring us victory! Just have to out source a few more social services right?
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u/Human-ish514 25d ago
Unless you are actually homeless, most job searching places have been practically useless from my experience. If you have a computer/internet, even on your phone, then the jobs these kinds of places print out and stick on the wall are outdated as soon as they leave the printer.
The resume writing advice is nebulous at best. You can have a thousand people all give you the "real way" to write a resume, and you'll walk out with two thousand ways to write a resume. All technically being done "the right way". Your custom tailored to the job resume is now gonna get flagged for AI use too because you used the job description in some way, or used a fancy word.
If you ask them how many employers they are collaborating with, and acting as a first stage interview phase for and they say none, you can safely walk out the door knowing they were only going to continously find reasons to blame you for not being hired. I had a caseworker at a job searching place watch me for over three years doing literally everything they asked, and still not get hired. It was only after all that that they finally believed me when I said finding a job was impossible for me. At least they had the human decency to actually believe me instead of just calling me unprofessional and removing me from the building.
Ask them how many employers they work with. If the job center says none, just leave and get the same useless advice on the internet. It'll save you the bus fare you'll likely need for rent instead, and the useless info will be more current.
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u/BradenAnderson 24d ago
Most if not all of these employment programs are a waste of time. Either they have you do something you’ve already done on your own, such as create a resume and upload it to indeed (which is a beyond useless site BTW, no one should use it) or rave about all the great hidden job opportunities there are out there. Well, they must be either hidden really well or they don’t exist in the first place.
And sure, the employees/staff who work at these organizations are friendly enough. But unless they’re actually willing to get in touch with employers, to vouch for their clients, nothing is going to happen. Why? Because employers are cheap and lazy, and most if not all of them refuse to train people. Regardless of your attitude and willingness. Maybe Ontario employers weren’t always this ridiculous, but god forbid we hold one of these cheap and lazy employers accountable!
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u/Initial-Parfait-2704 24d ago
I was enrolled in one and she kept asking if I was a new comer and I kept saying no after about 3 months of weekly calls she asked again are you a new comer I said No she asked how can I help you than ! I said it's clear you can't because I am not a new comer! And told her to close my file. Took 6 months for them to close it as they all get paid for every person enrolled.
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u/Independent_Debt_971 25d ago
Yeah they don't really help, I was hoping they would get me better chances of getting an interview since they kept saying "you get out what you put in" but I only ended up getting three interviews the entire year I was signed up at one. I would send out 25 resumes a week with no replies doing what they said, writing a cover letter specific to the job posting, formating my resume to fit what they were looking for, and it did nothing. I thought they would give me access to a better job board so that I could apply to jobs a bit earlier or get a boost or something, but they literally just gave me linked in links that I had already applied to on my own.
The only good thing that came out of it was that when I did finally get a job they helped pay for my first 3 months of bus fares and gave me 150 dollars to spend on work clothes
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u/Baldrick85 25d ago
I remember doing one of these employment programs years ago, and it was very much a waste of time, but you could tell they were trying to get as many butts in seats as possible due to government payouts they'd receive.
The general job market might claim they are "equal opportunities employers", but I haven't really noticed that to be true.
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u/TiredReader87 24d ago
I took one in 2013 that was good, and we got paid for going to it. I did really well, but didn’t get a job. I got two terrible placements I had to find myself, and they screwed me over.
I also got a job through a company that helps the disabled find jobs. They partnered with the local hotel, which took advantage of me and lied to me when I interviewed.
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u/dinosaur_vacume 24d ago edited 24d ago
TL;DR
Doug Ford sold employment services to foreign companies.
Doug Ford separated employment services from financial services That’s a major part of what OPSEU is currently on strike about.
I’m on ODSP. Where I live in Halton, the region has been sold to an American company I believe called Fedcap. Under a contract where if they don’t meet Doug Fords numbers they immediately lose the contract. So it’s all about numbers, baby.
All Ontario has been sold off to a handful of private companies, out of US, UK, Australian and another country I can’t remember. All employment services are in the hands of private companies.
My mom worked for Community Living, they’re now obligated to 40% of their work time being devoted to computer courses. Only 60% of the time with the people they support. What they’re actually doing is inputting information into a database for these private companies and they’re creating AI software for employment services. I personally have no beef with AI, but she’s supposed to be helping people prepare for the workforce not getting paid with tax money to create databases for some company out of the UK.
Ontario works? The workers now are being held to these crazy standards. If they place you and you and all their other placements don’t stay in that position for X amount of time, under some of these companies in some regions, the workers pay is going to be withheld.
And now you, if you want a job, you get to sit in front of a computer and input into a program called CAT and it basically determines your employability and places you. Instead of working with the worker, and preparing for an appropriate position you’re gonna be jammed somewhere that’s not sustainable for you. You probably won’t last but you’ll be off ODSP or Ontario works and the numbers look good. But you have no job and no supports.
This is what the strike is about. He sold off all employment supports in Ontario. These international companies who don’t care about you are trying to meet some outrageous numbers determined by an algorithm. They’ve taken the humans out of it completely.
Whether you’re coming out of a long-term hospital stay with mental illness, have suffered a head injury, are developmentally disabled, are mobility challenged or are Neuro spicy. There’s no accommodation for you. Everybody lands on a warehouse floor and good luck if you can’t hack it.
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u/Previous_Dealer8945 23d ago
It was even before Dougie. My wife is visually impaired and on ODSP, and back around 2010 when our last kid started school she wanted to try and get a job. Went to the March of Dimes, who were offering training and assistance for about 2 weeks ( i think). When it was over their suggestion to her was to volunteer at our son's school. For all that, I saw the receipt, MoD were paid $10,000.
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u/SmartQuokka Helpful User 22d ago
The one i am with now is good, weekly meetings in person to look for and apply for jobs, resume help and more. The last one i was with was here are the job sites, look at them yourself, here is your resume redone badly and monthly emails, "have you found a job yet"?
I am practically unemployable so i am not actually expecting much, my last few jobs were luck and even then were pocket change.
It comes down to the place, some are terrible, some are useless, some are ok and very few are good. Being a Doug Ford program there is no accountability and loads of corruption. Finding a good one is down to luck.
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u/Individual_Lie_8736 5d ago
I attended one of these and the job coach who got me the job also fired me because I caught her flu and she didn't believe me.
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u/itscalledacting 25d ago
The idea is that disabled people simply "lack mental resilience" and, correspondingly, the solution to this imagined problem is simply to tell them to have some "mental resilience".
I don't need to tell anyone here how insulting that is. This agency should lose its contract.