Please note: this list is not complete. It is provided as a guide. You may have other concerns about how ODSP staff treat you or your client. It is important for you to write about your concerns in your own words.
We have listed some categories and provided examples in each category.
In summary, the categories are:
Delays
Lack of respect
Poor communication
Withholding information
Inconsistency
ODSP staff not knowledgeable about policies, procedures and regulations
Lack of transparency
Lack of fairness
Lack of accountability
Incompetence
Delays
Recipients and advocates experience significant delays in accessing ODSP funds and services. For example:
- It can take up to six months to get a determination of having a disability by the Disability Adjudication Unit (DAU).
- It can take up to three months to start getting benefits, after being determined to have a disability by the DAU.
- When calling an ODSP office's voice phone, one can be put on hold for long periods of time.
Lack of respect
Many staff demonstrate disrespect through their tone of voice, expressions of frustration at having to answer a question, and behaviour. For example:
- Grabbing a recipient's wallet and dumping the contents on a table
- Refusing to touch a pen used by someone with HIV
- Keeping a recipient waiting an hour for a scheduled appointment when there is nobody else in the waiting room
Poor communication
There are many barriers in communication with ODSP offices. For example:
- It can be very difficult to get through to the ODSP office. An hour on hold is not uncommon.
- Nobody answers the TTY line.
- ODSP materials are not written in a user-friendly manner using clear English
- The office environment does not facilitate communication. Offices tend to be sterile and intimidating.
- It is not possible for some people with intellectual and other disabilities to understand the ODSP forms and other administrative requirements, yet there is no support to assist them with this.
Withholding information
Recipients are not informed of all benefits nor of all rights and responsibilities. For example:
- Recipients with apartment insurance are not told this could be covered under their shelter allowance; people with known medical conditions are not informed of the Special Diet supplement.
- Letters of suspension of benefits are of a general nature and do not specify the exact problem (e.g. benefits being suspended due to “missing informationâ€)
- Office staff will say the recipient needs to speak to “x†but will not provide his or her telephone number
Inconsistency
Staff from different offices and different staff within the same office making different decisions, which is unfair to recipients.
For example:
- One staff will say she needs receipts of major purchases; another in the same office says he doesn't care how the individual spends his money.
- Staff in one office approve money for technical devices for a recipient (e.g. visual smoke detector, visual doorbell); staff in another office will deny this request.
- Different staff from the same office give different answers to the same question.
ODSP staff not knowledgeable about policies, procedures and regulations
Some ODSP staff are unaware of policies, which can have negative impacts on recipients.
For example,
- In calculating whether a recipient should receive extended health benefits, an ODSP staff charged with the task adding up only drug costs over the previous year. He did not factor in vision care, dental care or MSN. When he was informed that these should also be included, he answered “interestingâ€.
- ODSP staff are unaware that it is their responsibility to book an ASL interpreter and tell Deaf recipients it is their responsibility to book the interpreter.
ODSP staff not knowledgeable about disabilities
For example,
- People with mental health disabilities often cannot meet deadlines because of depression, fear of going out, inability to concentrate, etc. ODSP staff often appear not to understand the impact of a mental health issue.
Lack of transparency
Staff do not explain how or why decisions are made. For example:
- A recipient received notice of an overpayment, but was never told why. When an internal review was agreed upon, it turned out that the ODSP staff were doing calculations incorrectly.
- A recipient stopped receiving benefits for no apparent reason. Her worker left several messages for the ODSP staff person over a three week period. The worker finally reached the ODSP staff and was told that the recipient was terminated “because the computer says soâ€.
Lack of fairness
Some ODSP regulations punish recipients for problems created by individual ODSP workers' errors .Sometimes staff are simply unfair. For example,
- A recipient was not informed that if she received too much income from her part-time work for three consecutive months, she could lose their ODSP. Once out of the system, the recipient was told that he could not apply for extended health benefits since it was for recipients, not applicants. An internal review indicated that, in fact, her income had not exceeded the limit for three consecutive months – ODSP staff had made a miscalculation.
- The child of a recipient turned 18. ODSP had the recipient's child's birthdate on file. The recipient did not know he needed to report his child's 18 th birthday to ODSP. ODSP, upon realizing the child was over 18, created an overpayment.
- People living in the North, where the cost of living is very high, have the value of food vouchers and diapers which were given to them deducted from their ODSP income.
Lack of accountability
ODSP staff may provide poor service but nothing is done to correct this; individual staff who make mistakes do not apologize and blame others (including recipients) for the errors.
For example,
- There may be significant problems with an ODSP staff person, but the person's manager will not respond to calls about the individual
- An ODSP staff conducted an internal review of a recipient's file. The recipient's advocate attempted for weeks to contact this staff person. When the staff person finally called back, after weeks of phone messages, he said he couldn't answer the question about the review since he was not the recipient's worker.
- Staff don't take responsibility for their errors and blame them on the computer system.
Incompetence:
ODSP workers and the ODSP system creates a huge number of errors. For example,
- The first retroactive cheque a recipient received covered a four month period and was for the full ODSP amount, despite the fact that the recipient worked part-time and ODSP had all the records of earnings. The ODSP staff was reminded of this and answered that the recipient would have to work out the overpayment with the office to which she was transferring the file.
- A recipient's benefits were suspended because ODSP claimed that she didn't submit pay stubs. In fact, ODSP had received the stubs, but a new staff person who input the data hadn't been properly trained and made mistakes. The previous data entry person said it wasn't her responsibility to train the new person.
- A recipient's benefits were suspended because of lack of documentation of earnings. When the ODSP staff was contacted, she said that she had received a faxed copy of the pay stubs a week in advance of the deadline but that she couldn't read them because the copy had been too dark. At no time was the recipient informed of this problem and asked to send another copy.