A person eligible for the employment-assistance program must produce a medical report establishing that his or her physical or mental condition is significantly and in all likelihood permanently or indefinitely deficient or impaired and that, for that reason and in view of the person’s socio-professional profile, this person has a severely limited capacity for employment.
Recognition of a severely limited capacity for employment is based essentially on deterioration of the person’s health as noted in the medical report. It should be noted that Income Security will not recognize a severely limited capacity for employment just because the beneficiary or the attending physician feel that her or she cannot work.
In the case of certain diagnoses, recognition of a severely limited capacity for employment is done automatically by the officer using the list of obvious cases (see 4.2.10 and 4.2.11). In some particular cases, mainly involving mental health problems, the file may be submitted to a doctor chosen by the Band Council.
Showing significant permanent or indefinite functional limitations may sometimes be sufficient for establishing a severely limited capacity for employment; however, most of the time these limitations must be combined with socio-occupational or psycho-social characteristics (such as age, education, work experience, family situation, learning capacity, length of time on assistance, and so forth) that make the person unable to perform any kind of employment, even light.
The following sub-topics establish the conditions for application and the various steps for recognition of a severely limited capacity for employment. Here is a brief overview:
An individual is recognized to have a severely limited capacity for employment if his or her physical or mental condition is significantly affected and if other conditions for severely limited capacity are met. In the same way, an individual who has been recognized by his or her attending physician as unable to work will not necessarily be recognized by income security services as having a severely limited capacity for employment.
Key elements to be taken into consideration:
- Medical evaluation describing the individual’s medical conditions and limitations;
- Identified functional limitations must significantly, directly or indirectly, affect the individual’s ability to work;
- Functional limitations must be evaluated based on objective medical evidence;
- Incapacity must me permanent and irreversible;
- There must be a causal relationship between the permanent functional limitation and severely limited capacity for employment ((Example: There is a precedence where physical limitations as severe as the amputation of two legs and two arms is deemed insufficient for recognizing a severely limited capacity for employment if the individual demonstrates rather favourable socioprofessional characteristics.)
- The individual’s social and professional characteristics such as age, education, professional experience, psychosocial adaptation and integration must be taken into account in determining capacity for employment;
- Since capacity for employment is determined based on individual characteristics, the situation of the job market in a given region is not taken into account and all jobs are considered on an equal basis for the purposes of implementing a last resort assistance program.
Since each situation is unique, you may, for the purposes of determining individual socio-professional profiles and documenting the file of each recipient, refer to professional resources such as occupational therapists or career counsellors.