Earlier this month, the Hamilton Community Foundation released its annual Vital Signs report, a "community check-up...that measures the vitality of our communities and identifies significant trends in a range of areas critical to quality of life." The report found, among other things, that in several Hamilton neighbourhoods, child poverty rates exceed 50%, and that 18,432 people used Hamilton food banks in the month of March 2011, a number that has risen from pre-recession levels. On today's episode of the HJRC, we focus on one specific finding: that the social assistance caseload in Hamilton is the highest it has been in a decade. Despite the fact that the link between poverty and ill-health is well established, individuals on social assistance continue to face immense hostility from people (including health professionals) who understand social assistance to be a "free-ride," and its recipients to be "lazy," "free-loaders" etc. To dispel these myths, HJR chats with Laura, a member of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction and an advocate who speaks about her experiences living on Ontario Disability and living with chronic illness.
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