How court-imposed conditions set people up to fail

Relevant policing stakeholders must update database systems, e.g. PRIME-BC, to:

Recommendation 21: Require that all police-imposed conditions are electronically registered, including:

1. the date of imposition;
2. the date or causal mechanism by which the condition will expire;
3. the specific content of the condition; and
4. the underlying reason for imposing the condition.

How court-imposed conditions set people up to fail

Relevant policing stakeholders must update database systems, e.g. PRIME-BC, to:

Recommendation 22: Ensure that PRIME-BC can be searched to track all police-imposed conditions in the aggregate, rather than only being tied to an individual’s file.

Service gaps and barriers & operationalizing stigma-auditing

Recommendation 23: The Province of British Columbia must amend the Human Rights Code, RSBC 1996, c 210 to prohibit discrimination and harassment based on social condition.

Service gaps and barriers

Recommendation 24: The Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions and the Ministry of Health must improve the ability of BC hospitals to meet the needs of people living with the effects of substance use, mental illness, and/or homelessness by:

• auditing experiences in hospitals, beginning with an analysis of people’s experiences where they have been turned away from emergency rooms or discharged and where there have been negative health consequences;
• working with people with lived experience to audit provincial standards for effectively managing substance withdrawal in hospital settings;
• ensuring that all hospitals offer supervised consumption services to patients; and
• working with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing to create transitional housing options to ensuring that sick and injured people are not released from the hospital to the streets or to emergency shelter.

Service gaps and barriers

The Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction must make immediate changes to BC’s Income Assistance and Disability Assistance programs including:

Recommendation 25: Increasing income assistance rates to the Market Basket Measure and indexing them to inflation.

Service gaps and barriers

The Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction must make immediate changes to BC’s Income Assistance and Disability Assistance programs including:

Recommendation 26: Reviewing the processes that are currently in place for reporting “welfare fraud” to provide greater accountability and ensure that people receiving income assistance are not denied survival income without due process.

Service gaps and barriers

The Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction must make immediate changes to BC’s Income Assistance and Disability Assistance programs including:

Recommendation 27: Increasing access to in-person services for income assistance and disability applicants.

Service gaps and barriers

The Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction must make immediate changes to BC’s Income Assistance and Disability Assistance programs including:

Recommendation 28: Ensuring that people living with disabilities can access disability support by:

1. simplifying the application process to reduce wait times and lessen reliance on advocates;
2. providing provincial guidelines for doctors/service providers on how and when to fill out disability forms; and
3. ensuring that hospital social workers are resourced and directed to work with patients in need to apply for disability benefits.

Service gaps and barriers

Recommendation 29: The Legal Services Society of BC must provide legal support for appeals where a person has been denied income assistance or disability assistance.

Service gaps and barriers

Recommendation 30: The Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs must immediately improve the number and accessibility of shelter options to ensure that everyone in BC always has access to a physical location where they can sleep, store belongings, and attend to personal care and hygiene in safety and without threat of displacement or sanctions. To do so they must:

• work in partnership with BC Housing to reinstate nightly turn-away counts at shelters and use data to ensure that there are adequate shelter beds to address the level of need in each municipality;
• with the exception of temporary Extreme Weather Response shelters, recognize that overnight-only shelters are untenable for residents and provide funding to expand shelter hours; and
• provide shelter residents an accessible and independent complaint process.