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Our Story

School Boards’ Co-operative Inc. – Who We Are

School Boards’ Co-operative Inc. (also referred to as SBCI) is a not-for-profit co-operative based out of Markham, Ontario. SBCI was established by a group of Ontario school boards in 1994, originally to support these school boards with workers’ compensation issues.

 

Responding to the evolving needs of school boards, SBCI now supports our members with a full suite of products and services relating to staff absences, including Attendance Support, Disability Case Management, Health & Safety, and Workers’ Compensation.

 

Our highly experienced and integrated team takes pride in serving our school boards, delivering advice and solutions tailored to our unique sector.

 

We are not a traditional consulting firm. Our not-for-profit co-operative structure, combined with our expert team, delivers exceptional value for money. We are governed by a Board of Directors elected from our member school boards.

 

SBCI is a cost effective, specialist extension of your operations.

We provide consulting in three areas:

 

 

Our values include:

  • Reliability
  • Focus
  • Collaboration
  • Value

Workplace Support Services

Workplace Support Services are your go-to Subject Matter Experts for all areas of non-occupational illness and injury and employee workplace support. We lead school boards through the development and implementation of a comprehensive Attendance Support Program. This includes both Disability Management (consecutive absence 5 days and greater and accommodation requests) and Attendance Management (short-term sporadic absences that exceed an established threshold), and Wellness/Mental Health and Resiliency.

Your Workplace Support Services include:

 

  • Development, implementation and ongoing monitoring and evaluation of your Attendance Support Program
  • Templated documents and communications to support all Programming
  • Review and analysis of key school board data to establish benchmarks, ongoing monitoring of program outcomes, identify trends and areas of opportunities
  • Complex case management support, as needed, including expert advice and guidance, reviewing documents and preparing letters
  • Facilitation and oversight of third-party referrals
  • Facilitation of regularly scheduled member webinars to discuss topical issues and school board related needs
  • Training/education sessions for various key stakeholders, including:
    • Disability Management (Legislative framework and your legal obligations, case management best practices, CSA Z1011 Work Disability Management System)
    • Attendance Management (Human Rights legislation, caselaw, roles and responsibilities, conducting supportive meetings)
    • Wellness/Mental Health and Resiliency (CSA Z1003 National Standard on Psychological Health and Safety, Building Resiliency, Principal/Leaders Training on Employee Support)

Health & Safety Services

SBCI's Health and Safety team consists of seasoned safety professionals, experienced within the school board sector, driven to provide innovative and practical safety solutions.

Your Health & Safety services include:

 

  • Providing advice and guidance on all Health and Safety issues
  • Evaluating overall safety program performance
  • Reviewing, benchmarking, and analyzing key incident metrics to identify areas for targeted prevention

Workers’ Compensation Services

We are a team of two lawyers and six licensed paralegals working with 58 school boards across Ontario with over 125 years of combined workers' compensation experience.

Your Workers’ Compensation services include:

 

  • Providing legal representation for written and oral appeals at the WSIB and WSIAT, mediation services, settlement conferences as well as negotiations
  • Advice and guidance on all matters related to workers’ compensation claims and WSIB disability management programs
  • Reviewing and analyzing key school board metrics to identify issues and assist the client to improve them as well as mitigate costs
  • Lobbying the WSIB to improve the quality of their service delivery to school board clients
  • Developing individualized training for new and other school board staff members on WSIB matters, including claims, legislative framework, employer obligations and RTW management
  • Facilitating webinars and regional training for groups of school boards on WSIB issues
  • Providing bulletin newsletters on relevant WSIB topics keeping clients abreast of the latest developments
  • Developing products to assist school boards to better manage WSIB claims such as the RTW Guidebook and the Head Injury Guide
  • Evaluating programs to assess the school boards practices against industry recognized best practices
  • Providing Annual Reports and benchmarking as well as WSIB Cost Projections for annual Budgets Reports
  • Monitoring of claims that have been identified as a risk to reach Assistance Program (AP) and/or excess loss insurance deductibles
  • Submitting claim notifications and updating reports to AP and excess loss insurer
  • Requesting reimbursement from AP and excess loss insurer for claims exceeding the established deductible threshold