Collaborative Partnership Network

Six years ago, Mike Little was working in management in the hospitality industry. He had just won a manager of the year award and was making good money doing a job at which he excelled. But his perspective on work changed forever when he met a group of farmers from Alberta, each of them disabled, at a Halifax hotel.

“The restaurant housed in this particular hotel had a front entrance with four or five steps,” he recalls. “If you were in a wheelchair, you couldn’t access the restaurant through the front entrance. But if you came in through the back service entry, you could.”
 
Five of the visiting farmers were in wheelchairs, and Little had to bring each of them to the restaurant through that back door.
 
“Now think about this,” he says. “Back in the ’50s if you were African Nova Scotian, you had to come in through the back door.” He found it unacceptable that in the 21st century anyone should face this same treatment. A few weeks later, the hotel management discussed whether they should spend $15,000 to upgrade the front entrance with a lift elevator or spend it on new curtains.
 
“We ended up spending it on new curtains,” he says, the disappointment still evident in his voice years later. “I ended up resigning.”
 
He decided to put his financial planning and managerial skills to use in the non-profit sector. Little is now the co-chair of the Collaborative Partnership Network (CPN), a group of 10 specialty employment agencies from across Nova Scotia that serves persons with disabilities. He also sits as executive director of Hants County Community Access Network, or Hants County CAN, one of the 10 partner agencies. These agencies work together to make sure persons with disabilities have full access to the labour market.
 
“I am very passionate about the work that we do here,” he says. “I view what we do as selling talent. I have incredibly talented individuals who come through my door. They just need a little support and some belief in themselves.”
 
The Collaborative Partnership Network was created 10 years ago and is funded entirely by Service Canada. It has been recognized as a best practices model for the way it delivers employment services. The executive directors for each of the 10 partner agencies have compiled all of their expertise and best practices, including assessment tools, intake processes and career counselling techniques to determine which ones fit the specific needs of persons with disabilities. They are constantly learning from each other and raising the standard of service for their clients.
 
The term “person with a disability” has a broad interpretation at the CPN. It may cover any variety of physical challenges and mental health issues. A client may have arthritis or schizophrenia. They may use assistive technology or mobility devices. Their disability may not necessarily be visible.
 
The network serves people from cross-disability perspectives, explains Little’s co-chair Janice Ainsworth. Ainsworth is also executive director of TEAMWork Cooperative Ltd., another CPN partner agency.
 
“In many other areas, there’s service delivery for persons with disabilities in certain disability-specific groups,” she says. “The challenge with that is if you don’t fit very exclusively to that disability-specific centre, you may not get served appropriately.”
 
The CPN is the only organization of its kind in Canada. Whereas similar organizations in other provinces compete for the same limited funding, the CPN operates under a mutually supportive model.
 
“Sometimes the funding is not always the same for each organization in our network, so we try to help each other find innovative ways to provide services to clients,” Little says. “That’s the kind of people that are here in Nova Scotia. Not what’s in it for them but what’s in it for the community.”
 
It’s impressive how the network uses its funding resources. Last year, close to 1,200 people found employment through the CPN, a 24 per cent increase from the year before. Hants County CAN, for example, helped 93 people find employment; with just a $320,000 contract from Service Canada, they generated salaries of $1.8 million.
 
“When people ask why such a small organization gets such a large contract, it’s simple,” says Little. “We get really good return on investment.”
 
It isn’t just the financial return either, says Ainsworth.
 
“When you watch the development, the growth in confidence and the impact on a person’s life, you’re forever changed,” she says.
 
That kind of effect is a driving force behind the network’s success. These are individuals working together to make Nova Scotia a more inclusive and barrier-free place.
 
“My colleagues are working from their hearts, and they’re working from their minds,” says Ainsworth. “We like to say we listen between the lines. You need to really listen, be still and wait for what comes forward. In some other environments, that isn’t possible because it’s rush-rush, hurry-hurry. Here it allows people to feel safe, to come forward, and to feel welcomed and not different.”
 
When Ainsworth says “here,” she means the various CPN agency offices, but she also takes the same view of Nova Scotia. She is a lifelong resident and although she loves to travel outside the province, she says she can’t imagine living or working anywhere else. There’s a natural beauty and a slower pace of life that add up to a kind of calmness here. That calmness offers an excellent balance to the very real threat of burnout experienced by so many people working in the non-profit sector.
 
Little feels the same way. Although his move to the non-profit sector meant cutting his salary in half, he says it was more than worth it.
 
“I made excellent money at what I did, but I was never home,” he says. “I decided to come back to a lifestyle that would suit my values in life. I want to spend more time with my family. I want to spend more time being well. This is a good life choice, and Nova Scotia is the place for it."