The non-profit settlement sector is at the core of Canada’s much celebrated settlement and integration approach to immigrant newcomers. But COVID-19 has strained the capacity of the sector as the crisis rapidly expands the human service needs of newcomers. The pandemic poses an immediate ‘triple threat’ to the sector: “revenue loss, office closures and service cancellations, and human resource challenges”. Many agencies are not in a position to keep operations open and are suffering significant job losses. This is especially concerning since non-profits act as shock absorbers for societies in crisis.
COVID-19 has pushed the settlement sector to embrace resilience and shape-shift into virtual modes. The challenge of moving to online services has been considerable. Larger settlement agencies have been in better position to make this shift because they usually have better access to the technology necessary to go online. Since settlement organizations are lean operations, technology is expensive and funders rarely provide adequate support for such investments, a technology gap exists. Still an Imagine Canada survey of social service charities found that 54% of organizations were able to innovate and move their programs online. The ability of many to make this shift is because there has been a steady, if uneven, movement in the settlement sector to use of technology for delivering services at a distance. Pre-arrival services are the most notable example.
There are mixed stories about how clients and settlement service staff and leadership are adapting. A recent qualitative survey suggests that overall, workers and management have been resilient and have adapted, in many cases with great success. Most are happy to be able to continue to work carrying out the mission of their organizations and serve clients in need. However, there remains a lot of uncertainty and stress associated with their work and the shift has significantly increased workload. A saying in the settlement sector during the pandemic is that “it is not business as usual it is more business than usual”. This raises a serious problem of staff burnout and mental health issues.
