“Needy,” “high-risk,” “vulnerable,” “slow.” When the words people use to describe themselves are the same as the labels in their case files, what does that say about how our social welfare systems shape the identity and possibilities of those who use them?
In 2014, three disability organizations asked an international team of designers and social scientists to help them understand and address lived experiences of social isolation. The team moved into a social housing complex in the “loneliest city” in Canada, Vancouver, in order to get to know their neighbours with and without disabilities. The project resulted in a five-year journey of partnership and team building, co-design and prototyping, failure and learning.
The social sector is stuck. Seventy years since the rollout of the modern welfare state, Canada is left with a cracked and overburdened old-world system that struggles to provide basic care. Human needs for connection, belonging, purpose and agency are largely forgotten, or actively thwarted, which prevents people from living towards their potential.
Whether it is in the disability sector, or in mental health and addictions, homelessness, immigration and refugee services, youth at risk, etc., the patterns are the same: cultures of compliance; rigidity and inflexibility; deeply embedded assumptions, rhetoric and ideology; the constant recycling of similar solutions; counting up the things that don’t really matter; hoarding power and control.
But how do you change it? How do you reshape a giant ecosystem with engrained approaches, habitual reactions and vested interests?
About The Authors
Gord Tulloch
Gord Tulloch has worked in the developmental disability sector for over twenty-five years. During this time, he served in many roles, from front-line worker to senior leadership, and as an accreditation surveyor, independent consultant, and college/university instructor. For the past several years he has worked as the director of innovation at posAbilities and focused on bringing in new methods, approaches, and partnerships that might produce meaningful and enduring system change. Gord holds a BA (Hons.) in philosophy and a master of arts in liberal studies. He hopes he can be a useful ally and co-conspirator to those calling for change.
Dr. Sarah Schulman
Dr. Sarah Schulman has spent her career in buses, bingo halls, and back alleyways as a social scientist focused on the experiences of people living on the margins. She is a founding partner of InWithForward, an international social design organization whose teams have produced award-winning and scalable interventions. InWithForward is her fourth organization; she started her first in elementary school. Sarah holds a BA (Hons.) in human biology, a masters in education, and a DPhil in social policy from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. As a Jewish, middle-class, able-bodied, cisgender woman, Sarah is forever learning and un-learning how to show up and hold space for change.
