There may be opportunities to align the ToD medical impairment criteria determined at the initial PSC decision with the APSC Policy Determinants of Permanent and Severe Impairments and Grade Levels (sec. 33, 34, 41-46). This will assist earlier access to these programs for CAF Veterans with more significant levels of disability and impairment while reducing their application burden. These alignments should also reduce administrative burden on VAC program decision makers. Formalizing alignments would require consultations and collaboration between VAC’s Policy Division, Medical Advisory group and Centralized Operations Division in order to determine the impairments and levels of impairment that are best suited for alignment in relation to program intent and overall eligibility criteria.
The evaluation also found limited correlation between the ToD medical impairment criteria for PSC and the CRB health-related assessment criteria. As a result of the weak correlation, coupled with the different program intent/design and the caregiver requirement, the evaluation team determined that using the ToD assessment to identify potential CRB recipients would not be effective.
VAC has developed a GBA+ Strategy to guide the work of the Department, but the evaluation team was unable to determine if program access at VAC is equitable because the appropriate client information or data is not collected to fully complete the analysis. The evaluation team was able to look at program access based on sex, official language, age, and geographic location. Although access appeared to be relatively equal based on sex and language, it was determined that there are some differences when examining Area Office location and favourable program decision rates. Opportunities to identify and make available, data items and sources relating to intersectionality should be pursued in order to support the VAC GBA+ Strategy and GBA+ analysis for program and policy design, delivery, and evaluative purposes.