Complex income assistance system may leave Alberta parents, children with inadequate funds – Calgary Herald
August 15, 2016
For parents living in poverty, navigating complex systems to access needed income supports can be challenging.
It’s essentially a “survival of the fittest kind of thing,” said Lisa Strohschein, a professor in the University of Alberta’s department of sociology.
“That’s not really the right way to do things,” she said.
In Alberta, the income support program and benefits accessed through the tax system account for the major funding sources available to parents in need.
As of May 2016, the income support program had a caseload of 48,197. Twenty-five per cent of those cases were single-parent families and 4.6 per cent were couples with children.
