Odsp handbook

Ontario Disability Support Program ODSP is a social assistance program that provides income and employment supports for Ontario residents living with a disability. Your payments will be reassessed using your income. Beneficiaries of ODSP income support receive a monthly payment that covers their basic needs and shelter. The ODSP basic needs support covers the cost of food, clothing, and other necessary personal items. The ODSP shelter allowance covers the cost of a primary residence such as rent, mortgage payments and other occupancy costs home insurance, property taxes, utilities and so on.

Monthly shelter allowance is calculated based on the actual shelter costs up to a maximum amount that varies depending on the number of people in the family. In some cases where the recipient meets specific disability criteria, the shelter costs of a second residence may be covered temporarily. Where the ODSP recipients receives board and lodging from the same source, the amount of income support is calculated differently. That is, the beneficiary will get a single payment and not the ODSP basic needs and shelter allowances.

Family size, age of dependents, location and individual circumstances all affect the ODSP rate for this allowance. You can find more details here on ODSP website.

You may also qualify for additional ODSP disability-related benefits such as the cost of assistive devices, hearing aids and mobility devices, and guide dog benefits. ODSP has partnered with about community-based service providers across Ontario to help beneficiaries prepare for work, find work, advance their career, and even start a business.

Employment Supports do not cover other benefits that are available from other organizations or programs. You can find a list of all the supports available here. The 2 supports are fairly independent. Related: Minimum Wage in Ontario. Ontario residents that are in an emergency or crisis situation can apply for emergency benefits to pay for things like food and housing.

The amount you can get varies depending on your specific circumstances but it will not exceed the financial assistance you can get with Ontario Works. You can learn more about the program here. For income support, applicants must be at least 18 years old to qualify. The application can be started up to 6 months before the 18 th birthday.

You must be a resident of Ontario to be eligible for both Income and Employment support. In addition, you have to be legally allowed to work in Canada for employment support. This is an obvious one. ODSP applicants must have a disability or medical condition that limits their ability to earn a living and care for themselves.

To qualify for ODSP payments, an applicant must have a financial need and provide documents to prove it along with a signed consent for the information to be verified. Other income like earnings from a job or self-employment income may impact the ODSP income support amounts. An ODSP caseworker will review your documents, income and assets and verify them to determine financial eligibility. You can start the application process online , over the phone or at one of ODSP offices across Ontario.

But note that even when you start online, you will still have to visit a local ODSP office to meet with a caseworker. The first part is to determine if you qualify financially for ODSP before the disability eligibility will be assessed. That is, the first set of online form or visit to a local office is meant to assess your financial eligibility. If you are financially eligible for income support, you will get a Disability Determination Package DDP to start Part 2 of the application process.

The decision notice will contain information on how to go about this. Part 2 of the application will determine if you meet the disability requirements.

DDP has 2 main parts that must be completed by approved health professionals. Registered nurses, ophthalmologists, optometrists, physicians, psychological associates, psychologists, and registered nurses in the extended class can complete both parts of the Disability Determination Package DDP. However, audiologists, chiropractors, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, social workers, and speech-language pathologists can only complete the Activities of Daily Living Index.

Applications may be reviewed as earlier as 10 business days but can also take longer depending on its complexity and if some information are missing. This is only required for income support. You can check these links for a list of local ODSP offices by region or search using your address.

Ontario Works is another social assistance program from the provincial government of Ontario. It is for people that need help with their living expenses.

Ontario Works assistance covers the essential costs of living, health benefits and helps beneficiaries find and keep jobs. In February , the Ontario Government announced it has started working with its municipal partners to better connect people with the supports they need. A snowball sampling strategy resulted in a total of 11 women who expressed interest in participating in an interview, 10 of whom were eventually interviewed.

Phone interviews were conducted with eight of the women and the other two were conducted face-to-face. The interviews ranged in length from approximately 30 minutes to an hour, with an average duration of 45 minutes. Each interview was tape recorded and transcribed verbatim. Following this, the constant comparative method of analysis was employed whereby relationships between two or more nodes were established based on the frequency of their occurrence in the same "conversational cluster" of interview text.

The participant names used in the following sections are pseudonyms chosen by the interviewees in order to maintain their anonymity. The 10 women who participated in interviews lived quite varied lives.

They ranged in age from 22 to 53 years of age and were all of Euro-Canadian heritage. Each of the women interviewed resided in urban centers of various sizes in Ontario. One woman had completed portions of a high school education, five had some sort of post-secondary training, two are currently pursuing an undergraduate degree, two had received college diplomas and one had received a Master's degree.

Nine of the women had been involved in full- or part-time paid employment at some point in their lives prior to applying for ODSP. The women's living situations were also fairly similar in that all but two of the interviewees lived in rental units or houses.

Five of the women had congenital impairments or illnesses: albinism, low vision, congenital heart disease, blindness and post-anoxia a brain disorder. The other five interviewees were living with illnesses which developed at different stages of their lives.

These included Epstein-Barr, chronic back pain, lupus, arthritis, dissociative disorder, fibromyalgia syndrome and seizure disorder. Many of the women lived with more than one illness or impairment. Some of the women experienced relatively stable ability levels and symptoms of their illnesses on a daily basis, such as in the degree of visual impairment, while others experienced fluctuations in ability level on a fairly regular basis, including an almost hourly change in the case of seizure disorder and fibromyalgia.

All but a few of the women faced physical barriers as a result of the illness experience that limited their daily activities. During Sophia's first few years of receiving ODSP, for example, she literally could not leave her house without being escorted by another person because of the severity of her seizures.

Marlene had suffered from chronic back problems her entire life and after developing fibromyalgia, she no longer had the physical stamina required to engage in paid labor. Further, she and her partner lived in the top story of a three-floor building and due to the strain on her joints of walking up and down stairs she was generally restricted to her apartment on a daily basis.

Sophia and Marlene's physical impairments restricted their use of space regardless of the amount of income support they receive through ODSP; however, as will be discussed in detail below, even these two women commented that their use of public and social space was also restricted due to their financial circumstances and not solely as a result of their physical impairments. Most of the women had received income assistance for at least 10 years, three of whom had continuously received support since legally becoming adults at the age of Another woman received support for less than a year at the time of the interview after having successfully appealed the Disability Adjudication Unit's the body that rules on applicants' appeals decision to deny her ODSP support after several years of reapplying and appealing administrators' decisions.

The discussion that follows illustrates some of the complex ways in which the women's status as a recipient of ODSP income support impacted upon their everyday lives and lifeworlds -- the concept introduced earlier as being the everyday spaces and places that make up a person's daily routine Dyck, Social space was mentioned regularly during the interviews as space that had been diminished in the women's lifeworlds.

This includes such places as the mall, movie theatres and friends' houses as well as recreational spaces such as public parks, local neighborhoods, and recreation centers.

The women's stories revealed the ways in which ODSP policies and regulations affect their abilities to engage in social spaces, especially through rules and regulations related to transportation and travel. Nine of the 10 women interviewed expressed concern about their abilities to access accurate and current information about the ODSP.

Their inability to easily access such information was compounded by the fact that they perceived the ODSP staff and administrators to be unaware of all the program's policies, regulations and rules.

The women struggled to find out about rules and regulations regarding transportation and travel; they wanted to know whether or not transportation to and from medical clinics was covered and if there were discounts or subsidies for public transportation. Given that money was extremely limited for many of them, they viewed knowledge about transportation reimbursements and discounts as a necessity, yet they rarely received this sort of information from administrators.

Angel, a year-old single mother who had worked full-time before becoming chronically ill, reported having to look up information about transportation reimbursements herself, and she found out that:.

I was really amazed at that! She went on to say: "One of the biggest things that is totally lacking is the support in knowing what's available. I had to go to physiotherapy in my own home town It was hard even taking the city bus so I had to take cabs — a very expensive proposition if you are going two or three times a week! I now find out that if I'd saved my receipts I probably could have applied and got the money back from ODSP for that transportation because of the medical appointments.

Though it is certainly not the case that all, or even most, transportation expenditures are covered by the ODSP, it is important that recipients be made aware of what types of transportation supports are available to them so that they do not find out too late, as in the case of Michelle. This lack of informational support has made some recipients reluctant to leave their homes to travel to public places or to see friends and family.

Because even if using inexpensive public transportation, they are concerned that reimbursable expenses will not be reimbursed. Eight women experienced extremely limited daily lifeworlds as income support recipients, in part due to their restrictive economic situations. Except for one woman who was pursuing her undergraduate degree at the time of the interview, most of the women rarely left their homes on a regular basis.

The limited amount of money they received through the ODSP income assistance program operating in conjunction with physical and mental impairments restricted trips outside the home. Sophia, a year-old woman who was recently able to discontinue her ODSP support due to improvements in her medical condition, believed that her limited financial resources as a recipient certainly restricted her everyday activities, but she also felt that she was not "owed" any additional income assistance.

She was the only woman interviewed who believed that though the funds provided to recipients were minimal, they were also adequate and that persons with disabilities were not entitled to any additional income assistance. Regardless of such differences in opinions, it is clear that limited finances have shrunk many of these women's lifeworlds and use of space outside the home due to the costs of transportation and tickets or entry fees for social and recreational spaces. Six of the women indicated that the cost of transportation was a significant barrier to activities outside of their homes.

Jean and Michelle, sisters with the same congenital illness who share a home, have been literally forced to remap their daily paths and activities around the public transit schedule and the available monies for social and recreational activities. Jean, a year-old woman who has never been involved in paid labor, commented that at times she does not even have the money to pay for the limited public transportation in her city, and so she is forced to walk to places despite her poor vision.

Lyndsay, a year-old woman with a visual impairment who generally does not find her use of space to be limited by being an ODSP recipient, demonstrated how certain aspects of the ODSP directly constrain a recipient's use of space outside of the province.

As she explained:. I said to somebody, the next thing you know they'll have us all wearing tracking bracelets! Like the ones the put on prisoners! Her comments indicate her feelings of being a prisoner because her use of space outside of the province was controlled. You need to use the Changes Report form to report when something changes in your life. For more information, read our information sheet Reporting When Something Changes in My Life: Filling Out the Changes Report Form will provide opportunities for choice, self-advocacy and participation in matters relating to the home as well as facilitating access to community services and facilities.

Because the government offers income support and benefits to people with medical conditions that may improve, we need to be able to confirm who is still eligible. Yellow form. The Self report to be completed by yourself. You can complete the Self Report if you want to provide more information about how your health problems affect you.

Or you can choose not to complete it. The Self-Report Form is optional. You don't have to complete this form, but it will give us a more complete picture of your situation.

People on ODSP should not be expected to take a vow of poverty. Partners in Support of People with Disabilities Wsib. Two main problems came to surface through my observations over this past year. Give the form and the brochure to the health professional who will complete your ODSP application.

Boozary on October 11, Employee Assistance Program Evaluation Report. Codicil: A Codicil is a form that allows you to make simple amendments to your existing Last Will and Testament. End-of-Life Plan: An End-of-Life Plan is a document that allows you to plan your memorial service and express other final wishes that aren't addressed by other estate planning documents.

Report an injury or illness Send us a form or document Please contact or TTY: between the hours of am to pm EST, Monday to Friday for all eService inquiries and support issues. On his Self Report Form, Mr. You can also get a copy of the form from any of the Community and Social Support Centres. Incidents 3 Avoid most self-promotion This includes solicitation of referrals, posting your own blog, video channel or personal website, and recommendations for users to do business with you.

We expect that users do not use this forum to build a brand, for financial gain, or to attempt to gain traffic or users. Note: If required sections of the DDP are not completed, the form will be sent back to you for completion and this can cause a delay in the application process.

Now I dont have to rely on hand outs, and have a purpose in life. Most people can work if they have to.

What about the utilities such as hydro, water, internet or cable, heating, telephone How will these be paid for a single person living in an apartment? Is there a restriction in leaving Canada for a certain period of time?

No Notice or notification on the dollars a month Covid 19 is extremely disturbing! My son could have really used this and no notice was given at all. Were the case workers told to not notify their clients or is this of neglect of his case worker?

A key part of their job is to help disabled people navigate the process it is not? Because they know people with disabilities have a high suicide rate. So they will wait it out as long as possible. Why are disabled citizens discriminated? Why if the disabled are given a social insurance number, are disabled restricted to pursuing a livelihood? Deductions in particular, no incentives? Why are employers not mandated to hire disabled? They are mandated to hire all other groups!

Why is a disabled person discriminated from independent income, if wanting to marry, or is married, when social insurance numbers are given? Why is a disabled person spouse forced to take on the burden of financially supporting their whole family? Why would social services not want to help disabled suffering families from break ups and depression? Why would social services take away a disabled person right to provide for their family, rent, food ect… Why would social services discriminate and create a system that violates human rights?

Under the Canadian charter of human rights? Ya feel me? I used to be one of these people that have no idea what a disabled person is going through.

I used to think that it was more of a weakness. Well, I worked until I was 45 making 6 figures for the majority of that time. I had a panic attack at work and kept going like it never happened. After a year of a diagnostic program at the hospital, I was found to be autoimmune with diabetes and scleroderma along with a few other incurable diseases. To look at me I look normal I think. My friends and family tell me to stop trying to go back to work. I have been given ODSP without review and was approved on my first application.

I made over k for years. Instead of suing my insurance company I allowed my family to blow through my savings in about a year while I tried to fight my illnesses. After another year of living off long term from Sunlife I was kicked off. I got a lawyer but was told it was too late as per the statute. Sun life paid a month take home and ODSP paid a month with one eligible child, I also had an 18 year old at the time.

My wife left me with the kids. I would give anything to go back to work. All the medication I take every morning and night makes things feel worse.