A key part of fair service is making information accessible.

Missy requested a crisis grant from the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction (MSDPR) because she had no money to pay for food, diapers or her upcoming rent. She called MSDPR several days after making the request to ask for an update but she was told that her request was not considered urgent and her application would take several more days to process.

Missy had requested another crisis grant for help with buying clothing earlier in the month, but had not heard anything from MSDPR about that request either.

Concerned that her applications were being delayed, Missy contacted us.

We spoke to a supervisor at MSDPR who agreed to review the file. The supervisor discovered that Missy had in fact made three recent requests for crisis grants: one for clothing, one for food and one for shelter.

The supervisor told us that Missy’s clothing grant request had been approved and was ready to pick up but it did not appear that staff had called Missy. The supervisor also said that the food crisis grant request was still under review by staff but she wanted to ensure that the process was completed accurately so she stepped in to help and the grant was approved.

Finally, the supervisor explained that MSDPR wasn’t able to process Missy’s shelter grant unless her rent was overdue. The rules require that a person must be unable to meet an expense at the time the expense is due before MSDPR can issue a crisis grant.

The supervisor told us she would have a staff member call Missy to explain the situation with each of her crisis grant requests and to let her know that two were approved and ready for pick-up.

We followed up with Missy to ensure she received and understood the information from MSDPR and she let us know that she did.

As MSDPR processed Missy’s crisis grant requests and contacted her to explain the situation we concluded that reasonable steps had been taken to respond to the unfairness issues identified. As a result, we ceased our investigation and closed our file.