3.2 Description Of The Initiative

The social and economic inclusion project in Atlantic Canada began in 1998 with a think tank on child poverty, hosted by the Atlantic Regional Office. Attendees of the workshop - representatives of the four provincial governments and of community groups - came away with a new, shared recognition that the concept of social and economic exclusion could go further than the concept of poverty in explaining health and social outcomes, and agreed that it would be the future focus of their work. For many of those involved, this workshop was a defining moment that triggered a fundamental shift in thinking and stimulated a wave of creative energy around addressing persistent and stubborn social problems. However, an initial structure for the work, a regional advisory committee with representation from all four provinces as well as other partners, was found to be unworkable, most likely because of a lack of mutual trust, expressed as a concurrence problem between governments. This led to the establishment of an agreement with the Maritime Centre to develop an effective collaborative model and to facilitate the subsequent steps.

Three Reference Groups were formed, each with seven to 10 representatives of key government sectors and community-based groups. Each group was charged with the collective production of major papers on aspects of social and economic inclusion and exclusion in their areas. This was the main work of the initiative during the period covered by the case study. These papers were produced and disseminated by spring 2000. Available on the Maritime Centre Web site they are:

• New Brunswick Reference Group, Social Investment: It's Time to Invest in New Brunswick's Children, Families and Communities. This paper documents the value of social investment and the development of effective collaborative frameworks.

• New Brunswick Reference Group, Social Investment: A New Brunswick Discussion Kit. Contains discussion background and six New Brunswick case studies. The latter are regarded by several of the community-based partners interviewed as especially eloquent testimonials to the value of the social inclusion approach, with clear links to ongoing community-level work.

• Newfoundland and Labrador Reference Group, Social Inclusion: On the Path to Social Development in Newfoundland and Labrador. Linking the social inclusion/exclusion concepts to the Newfoundland and Labrador Strategic Social Plan, the paper describes a variety of participatory social development methods and gives numerous examples of participatory practices and alternative services. It concludes with the identification of key elements for implementation of the Strategic Social Plan.

• Nova Scotia/Prince Edward Island Reference Group, Health and Social Policy are Everyone's Business: Collaboration and Social Inclusion in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. With a focus on the costs of social exclusion and how recent policy shifts have affected excluded populations, especially women, the paper provides successful and unsuccessful examples of intersectoral collaboration as well as guidelines for the development of relationships and structures to ensure economic and social inclusion.

• Maritime Centre of Excellence for Women's Health, Information Kit on Social and Economic Inclusion. Intended as a support for workshops and presentations, this kit provides overheads and background sheets on 10 building blocks for inclusive public policy: political will, leadership, organizational readiness, collaboration, relationship building, community capacity building, respect for community, commitment to healthy public policy, investment in communities and people, and measurement of results and progress.

The production of these documents entailed enormous collaborative effort and investment of time and energy from participants, as they set themselves the task of developing first a common language and then a collectively owned understanding of the ways in which social and economic exclusion are determined, reinforced and expressed in each province. For all of those consulted, this process was enormously valuable and has had impacts well beyond the mere production of the documents. A regional workshop in March 2000 allowed the Groups to share each others' work and to prepare plans for future steps in approaching the goal of developing more inclusive social and economic policy. These will include dissemination of the materials in the context of an overall communication strategy making the material more widely accessible, developing models for workshops aimed at policy makers, as well as a major symposium to be held at the end of 2001. Broadening the membership of the Reference Groups to include the private sector and more culturally excluded groups is also on the initiative's agenda for some groups.

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