There are growing calls from families, caregivers and employees to scrap a British Columbia Crown corporation and bring its services back under direct government control.
Critics say Community Living BC has a become a bloated bureaucracy that too often fails vulnerable British Columbians.
The agency provides supports to adults living with developmental disabilities.
Peggy Fierheller lived independently but under the care of CLBC.
“I really do miss her. I miss her jokes. I miss her stories,” said Fierheller’s sister Kerry Lawson.
During the pandemic, the normally outgoing and social Fierheller fell into depression due to isolation.
Lawson said her sister lost the will to care for and feed herself.
The family put in requests to CLBC for more community inclusion hours and a place in a supervised home.
Before those additional supports could be found, Fierheller wound up in hospital, where she would spend the final four months of her life before dying of malnutrition.
Lawson actually spent 15 years working for CLBC, leaving the organization in 2019.
She now advocates on behalf of families with loved ones in CLBC care.
“It’s kind of a thankless job because they don’t have any money now,” she said.
“I am supporting numerous families of very complex, high-needs people and they’re getting nothing. They’re getting 700 (dollars) a month.”
CLBC has been a Crown corporation since 2005, and before that the work it does was handled directly by provincial government ministries.
Lawson would like to see its mandate returned to government control – and she’s not the only one.
The BC General Employees Union represents 800 CLBC staff members and says they voted in June of last year to call on the government to bring the agency’s work back into the government fold.
BCGEU president Paul Finch told CTV News the agency is bloated and spends too much money on bureaucrats and executives.
“They’re receiving this public funding, but we’re not seeing the internal accountability that we need to see in place,” Finch said. “That’s hurting clients, it’s hurting caregivers and it’s hurting our members who work there.”
CLBC receives $1.7 billion in annual provincial funding.
In an email to CTV News, the agency disputed allegations it is a bloated bureaucracy and claimed it is “administratively lean.”
It says 93.7% of this year’s budget will go primarily to service providers who support 29,000 people with disabilities.
More than 4,000 of those clients live in home-share situations with full-time caregivers.
A recent Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Florence Girard, a woman with Down syndrome who starved to death while living with a caregiver in the home-share program, heard from multiple witnesses that caregivers are chronically underfunded given the expectations and responsibilities of the role.
“Under the current rates, a home-sharing provider receives between $1,700 a month and $5,800 a month in tax-free compensation, depending on the disability related needs of the person they support. Some home-sharing providers support two individuals,” CLBC said in its statement.
In many cases, that compensation is meant to cover round-the-clock care, not just a typical 40-hour work week.
In the last fiscal year, CLBC CEO Ross Chilton and four vice-presidents received a total of $1,433,422 in pay and benefits.
CTV News asked Poverty Reduction and Social Development Minister Sheila Malcolmson if she thinks big changes are necessary in the way the province and CLBC operate.
She said CLBC is not a wasteful organization, but the NDP government has a mandate across all ministries to spend money the best way possible for the people being served.
“We don’t want our structures to be inefficient or getting in the way of service delivery, so we are always looking for new models and new ways to work,” Malcolmson said.
