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Access
How people enter service systems, establish eligibility, find the right point of contact, move through waitlists, and obtain supports.
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Doctoral research
Delegating Care
Multilevel governance and administrative burden in Canadian disability services
Adult disability services in Canada are organized through networks of ministries, agencies, non-profit organizations, front-line workers, families, and service users. I study how differences in the way provinces organize these relationships shape access, administrative burden, coordination, service stability, and equity.
Central question
How do different provincial governance arrangements shape access to disability services, administrative burden, coordination, and equity?
I follow responsibility from provincial governments through the organizations and people responsible for implementing policy. This connects decisions about funding, contracts, accountability, eligibility, and administration to what happens when people seek, receive, deliver, and maintain support.
What I am studying
Governance becomes visible through service delivery
Provincial systems distribute responsibility across public institutions, community organizations, workers, service users, and families. Those choices shape who makes decisions, where accountability sits, how resources move, and how much administrative work people carry.
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Administrative burden
The learning, compliance, and psychological costs associated with finding information, completing applications, undergoing assessments and reassessments, and navigating multiple organizations.
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Coordination and stability
How responsibilities connect across ministries, agencies, providers, and programs, and whether supports remain dependable as needs, funding, or providers change.
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Equity
How access, delay, burden, and service gaps vary across geography, support needs, family resources, and social location.
Comparative cases
Three provincial service systems
British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario share broad commitments to community living while organizing authority, funding, and accountability in different ways. That variation provides the comparative leverage for the dissertation.
British Columbia
Delegated Crown agency
Community Living British Columbia sits between the provincial government and the organizations that deliver services. The case provides leverage on how arm's-length authority, contractual oversight, and formalized accountability shape coordination and service delivery.
Alberta
Centralized funder-purchaser
Alberta combines centralized provincial funding and administration with a delivery system anchored in non-profit organizations and family-managed supports. The case focuses attention on contractual governance, provider capacity, and coordination across a decentralized community sector.
Ontario
Ministry-led regulation
Ontario combines provincial policy and regulatory control with regional intake and a large network of transfer-payment agencies. The case provides a useful test of how standardized entry and formal oversight operate across a large and institutionally diverse service system.
Comparative logic
What changes from one system to another?
Authority
Who makes decisions about eligibility, funding, planning, oversight, and service delivery?
Funding
How do contracts, individualized funding, fiscal rules, and budget decisions shape organizational capacity and service stability?
Accountability
How do reporting requirements, accreditation, inspection, and other oversight tools shape organizational behaviour and discretion?
Experience
How do these institutional arrangements register in the work of providers and the experiences of people navigating services?
Research design
Following governance from institutions to experience
I use a comparative mixed-method design to reconstruct how each system developed, examine how authority and funding operate today, and connect those structures to the experiences of people working within and navigating them.
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Documents and archives
I reconstruct the development of each provincial system through legislation, regulations, policy records, annual reports, archival material, and organizational documents.
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Interviews
Semi-structured interviews connect formal governance arrangements to practice through the perspectives of public officials, organizational leaders, providers, advocates, service users, and families.
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Survey evidence
A comparative survey provides systematic evidence on access, administrative burden, coordination, fairness, service stability, and experiences navigating provincial disability systems.
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Fiscal mapping
Budgets, public accounts, funding arrangements, and other fiscal records trace how resources move through each system and how financing shapes organizational capacity and service stability.
Why it matters
Institutional design shapes who carries the work of care
Disability policy is often assessed through spending, eligibility, and formal program commitments. The organization of service delivery also matters. Systems distribute authority, discretion, administrative work, responsibility, and risk among governments, organizations, workers, families, and service users.
Delegating Care asks what happens after governments commit to providing support: who administers it, who delivers it, who navigates it, and who carries the costs when responsibilities become fragmented or difficult to locate.
Associated projects
Extending the project across scales
Two related projects carry questions from the dissertation into work on disability citizenship and local governance.
Book chapter
Disability Citizenship in Multilevel Service Systems
Using Edmonton as a focal case, this chapter examines how provincial disability policy meets locally governed systems of transportation, housing, public services, and community participation.
Article project
Localizing Disability Citizenship through Multilevel Service Systems
A comparative study of how local governance arrangements shape the implementation and practical effects of provincially organized disability policy across Canadian municipalities.