Letter template for you to use - Student

Dear Jason Luan,

Minister of Community and Social Services

I am thankful for the chance to reach out to you today regarding the Essential but Forgotten Campaign through the Alberta Disability Workers Association. I am hopeful that my letter to you will provide perception into the life of a student and worker in this field. I am a Program Coordinator for the Calgary SCOPE Society, and a full-time student at the University of Calgary in the Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies Program. But you see, I am much more than that. I am also a friend to the individuals that I work with. I am their first call in the morning, I am their advocate when we attend doctors’ appointments, I coordinate their optometrist exams, their pharmacy medications, I help them budget so they can save their money, I help them cook, I take them to programs, and I help take the stress off their families when their family members need respite care. I work in clinical programs across Calgary to ensure that the people that I work with do not overuse system resources such as emergency services.

In addition to all that I do in a work environment, I study full time to learn about systemic problems in our society that keep people with disabilities in vulnerable positions. I have learned a lot over my last four years in this program, and although I am graduating this year after having unique experience in a leadership position at my workplace, I still feel like I have much to learn.

However, I think that I am at a turning point in my life where even though I have invested the last eight years of my life into the work that I do and the education that I have received, I am very concerned about my future and the stability that this field provides. With graduation upon me, I now have a degree that I have spent thousands of dollars on but am concerned I will never be able to pay that back. I am concerned that with rising inflation rates, I will continue to struggle to put food on my table, pay my mortgage, and live a lifestyle that I am comfortable in. I have invested my entire being into the human services field for eight years. I took a four-year degree program at one of the top 5 research universities in the country, I am graduating with loads of experience and an excellent skill set. But I still am kept up at night, thinking about how my future will affect me, if I stay in this field. I often wonder about if I will ever be able to afford to have kids, or be able to afford my upcoming wedding, be able to afford to take time off to visit family or be able to continue to gas up my vehicle.

Currently, even though I have a supervisory position, I am living paycheque to paycheque. I truly feel as if my studies were interrupted and that I did not perform at my ultimate best in university, because I constantly had to worry about money, getting enough hours to pay my bills, and this ultimately pushed my focus away from school and more on work. I do believe that I gained a lot of hands-on knowledge, but I feel like I was forced to choose between the cost of living and my grades suffering as a result. Even when I graduate, I will still need to pick up extra shifts to afford anything. While completing my degree program, I had to still maintain 35+ hours a week at work to make ends meet. While working these hours, my attention has been severely pulled from school. I also feel as if that came at a very large cost to my mental health, as I struggled to hand assignments in on time, I have often cried myself to sleep over the last two years of my program, and I continuously feared that I would fail out of my program if I did not force myself to stay awake for almost days at a time to work and then complete assignments. I have been in a constant battle of survival and trying to obtain an education so I can have a better future. The damage that has been done cannot be undone now. But my hope is that in this fight for higher wages against this rising cost of living, that I can help others who might be working in the field as well as studying to be able to afford some peace of mind while attending school.

A higher wage for disability workers will not just ensure that our future will be secure, but it will also attract highly skilled individuals to the field who have worked hard to obtain an education. This is important, because we need workers who can move mountains in this field. A raise increase would not only benefit all the workers in the field, but it would also benefit government officials and the systemic resources such as emergency departments and police. This benefit would come because skilled workers can help diffuse situations with individuals with disabilities in crisis in the community which cuts down on police resourcing. We are also very skilled at keeping people out of the hospital, taking up beds in the emergency room. Specialized services in the disability field help relieve some pressure on these systemic resources as many of us work as parts of multi-disciplinary teams in the field.

Again, I thank you for taking the time to read about my concerns and I also thank you for taking time to understand how important this topic is to me. I hope that my letter gives you insight into how much work it is to be in this field, and provides you with perception of how much we as disability workers love what we do. Although we love what we do, we need to be able to support ourselves on a living wage. In the last eight years, we have not had an increase despite the cost of living increasing by a whopping 14%. Our general ask for a 25% wage increase would ensure that we are able to continue doing the work that we do as contributing members to society. Please take some time to review this letter and others that you are likely receiving right now as our campaign is well underway. I look forward to hearing back from you.