Collingwood Neighbourhood House collaborating with Coast Mental Health
Three new Vancouver neighbourhoods have recently started receiving services through the Homeless Outreach Program. In Collingwood/Renfrew, Collingwood Neighbourhood House is working with Coast Mental Health to provide outreach workers who canvas the community looking for homeless people and connecting them to housing and other support services.
Coast already offers outreach services through the Homeless Outreach Program in Yaletown and will be the non-profit housing provider at the St. Helen’s Hotel once renovations are complete on this government-owned SRO.
Sharing lessons learned on the Downtown Eastside
Word of the Homeless Outreach Program and its successes is spreading across Canada. Brian Malkowich, with the Manitoba government’s Family Services and Housing, Health and Healthy Living ministry, visited Vancouver in mid-July to see what he could learn about the program. He spent a day touring the Downtown Eastside with RainCity’s outreach worker Christoph Hofmeister and program manager Lori Dennis.
"Part of my division’s role is to review existing housing-related policies, programs and services that lack coordination within the system and propose enhancements or alternatives to improve policy coordination and service delivery with respect to homelessness," said Brian. "I was impressed with the flexibility of the outreach staff and the ingenuity with which they do their jobs. The program doesn’t seem to be heavy in bureaucracy and workers are given the autonomy to do what they feel is required to help an individual. I was also impressed by the variety of services provided and the resource knowledge of the workers."
One of the things that Brian likes about the program is its approach to the challenges of breaking the cycle of homelessness. "The Homeless Outreach Program works holistically on all of the issues and does not endorse a silo approach." Asked what he learned that he can apply to his work, Brian replied, "Various items such as the structure, resources and other elements need to be coordinated to ensure the success of programming and as to whether the programming is making a real difference to the lives of the clients."