ABSTRACT Ontario's Integrated Employment Services reform promises person‐centred assessment and ‘life stabilisation’ supports before people on social assistance are pushed towards work. This article argues that the model is structurally incapable of delivering on that promise because it layers standardised, marketised employment services onto a social assistance regime that keeps people in deep poverty and rations basic supports. Drawing on an anonymous online survey of nearly 1200 Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program recipients who were seeking or considering employment, we use descriptive statistics and thematic analysis to foreground recipients' own accounts of income adequacy, life‐stabilisation supports and Employment Ontario services. Respondents consistently described a system in which housing, food and health costs far exceed benefits; stabilisation supports are difficult to access, crisis‐oriented and time limited; and employment services are thin, generic and poorly aligned with longer‐term goals. At the same time, many reported respectful relationships with individual workers operating within outcome‐based contracting arrangements and scarce resources. We situate these patterns within debates on activation, marketised employment services and social reproduction to show how Integrated Employment Services can mandate activation while failing to create the material and institutional conditions required for sustainable and decent employment.
Mohammad Ferdosi (Wed,) studied this question.