As unemployment benefits and the nature of jobs change, the need for literacy skills will increase and the skills themselves will change. The demand for coordinated literacy programs may also increase. In Canada, both federal and provincial governments have shifted the financial and social burden for unemployed and unemployable adults to the local community. A high proportion of these two groups are low-literate adults likely to become a financial burden on their community and society in general. Local communities do not have the fiscal resources to provide adequate income assistance to these adults and have little control over creating jobs that might employ them. The community, therefore, is left with the responsibility for responding to prior failures of the educational system and current changes in the nature of work, and for supporting those who require financial assistance. One response is to provide educational programs through which adults can increase or improve their literacy skills in the hope that such skills will provide solutions to some of the problems facing both communities and low-literate adults.

Adults with low literacy skills may have had problems learning to read and write due to past experiences in schools and poor self-esteem due to past failure in the educational system (Gabor- Katz & Watson, 1991; Horsman, 1990; O'Brien, 1989; Purcell-Gates, 1994). One means for acquiring literacy skills in adulthood would be to re-enter the educational system, but past experiences may have created overwhelming obstacles for the adult learners and make this option untenable for them. From the perspective of the educational system, re-accepting such adult learners may place the system in the position of having to acknowledge its earlier failures.