Outreach program needed to help those ‘living rough’

There is a need for an outreach program to help those “living rough” in Haldimand and Norfolk.

But how best to deliver such a program remains a topic of discussion, says Louise Lovell, program manager for Haldimand-Norfolk Homeless Prevention Services

“What we can say for sure, at the end of the pilot project, is that there is evidence that there is a need for outreach,” Lovell told members of the counties’ Health and Social Services advisory committee on June 26. “But not necessarily in the format that we delivered it during the pilot project.

“We believe there is a need but the way we did it was overkill.”

Lovell said that there has been plenty of discussion around different ways of providing outreach service when it’s needed following an eight-month pilot project that ran in both counties in 2022.

The project included workers from the community paramedics programs as well as the social services and housing departments.

Responding to reports from the community, team members visited people who were living in encampments, vehicles or abandoned buildings to check on their health and provide assistance. Team members also sought to link those in need with available services.

Both teams used vehicles equipped with medical supplies to treat basic and common health issues such as diabetes, wound care, COVID-19 vaccines and equipment to check a person’s body temperature, pulse rate, breathing rate and blood pressure.

The pilot project team went out one designated day a week and provided assistance to 152 individuals during the pilot project.

If there were no encampments or other locations to visit, the team members visited other social services and community partners to spread the word about the outreach program. They also visited local businesses at night in the downtown including bank vestibules to leave information about local services, Lovell said.

The province has provided an extra $3,610,300 to hire five more people for homelessness prevention. The extra staffing and funding will be part of the future of the community outreach program, Lovell said.

However, it will take some planning to work out the logistics to determine how best to deliver a program in a targeted and timely way, Lovell said.

Responding to a question from Norfolk Coun. Alan Duthie, Lovell said that based on reports from team members, the biggest needs of those living rough is mental health and addictions support.

“We also had a lot of interactions with people who weren’t living rough but they were perceived to be,” Lovell said. “They did have someplace to live but they required all kinds of other health and support to have stable housing.”

Lovell said one of the things that staff learned through the pilot project is that going out one day a week for a full day wasn’t the best use of everyone’s time.

There was often a delay of a couple of days between the time a report about an encampment was filed and when the team was scheduled to do community outreach.

Going forward, the team wants to see if it’s possible to deliver an kind of on-demand program that can react more quickly to calls.

The committee received the report as information.

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