Hello everyone and Happy Spring!

YESS started 2020 with a very strong financial profile and a lot of excitement about the momentum we are gaining. We spent the winter months taking care of each other, celebrating some of our wins, and continuing to build upon our growing foundation of structure, processes, and trauma-informed practice. We have seen significant successes with the work of our Trauma Support Team (we have delivered over 100 individual therapy sessions and many informal group sessions since April 2019, and we have seen our EPS and crisis calls decrease) and we have been thrilled with the success of our new Youth Education and Employment Program that provides a low-barrier entrance into life, education, and employment skills as well as job shadowing and work experience with corporate community partners. We have also been working hard with our youth agency and homelessness partners to develop and improve our city strategy for the prevention of youth homelessness. In the coming year, we will begin initial planning around evolving YESS to fit within a municipal and provincial strategy for the prevention of youth homelessness. Prevention can be both early prevention (ensuring a young person never becomes homeless) and later prevention (ensuring a young person doesn’t become further entrenched in homelessness). At YESS, we are focused on late prevention—ensuring that the youth who visit us have the connections back to family or safe housing situations as well as life skills, emotional regulation, relationship building, and  trauma healing support to help them safely and appropriately integrate into community.

As the sun shines and the new shoots and bulbs grow outside, we are furiously growing our capacity and our knowledge to prepare for the big work ahead of us.

This spring, I invite you to join us in our excitement about the future—celebrating is much more fun together!

Good winter, everyone,

As I age and move through the cold months with more focus on my discomfort, I realize I have lost my childhood joy of the gifts of winter: the snow, the bright sun, the quiet contemplation, and the wrapping of ourselves in warm comfort.  We say good evening, as we greet our fellow humans in the glow of the moonlight, intentionally appreciating the gifts of the night and acknowledging the blanket of comfort and renewal that it can bring. And so, I am choosing now to acknowledge the gifts and the joy of winter with an intentional greeting of good winter and a smile.

I have spent weeks thinking about what to write about for this edition. These letters are important to me. They help me remember what to focus on. What do I need to say? What is it time for? 

And I have been lost. 

I have been lost for a while now. 

I have been lost in the intense mission of this powerful yet delicate organization. I have been lost in the frustration and anger of a system and community that is so unfairly balanced. I have been lost in the pain of the young people I see hurting everyday: lost in their deaths, their abandonment, and their disappearances. I have been lost in the pain of a staff that is exhausted and hurt and yet still so dedicated to a solution. I have been lost in my own pain in experiencing this, and the pain of my family, both as they navigate their own lives and as they experience my pain with me. 

I chose to move into the not for profit space because my heart hurt—I needed passion and purpose (and boy did I find it). 

But I left something behind: joy. 

And I realized this week, I didn’t lose joy. 

I left it. 

I refused it. 

I let myself feel the deep hurt of our young people, of our parents and families, of the staff, of my fellow CEOs and EDs, of communities, and of my own family. But I did not let myself experience joy. How could I when there is so much suffering, when there is so much work to be done?

My intention was true—I wanted to help. But I became so lost in the trauma that I forgot what brings us out.

The opposite of trauma, in my perspective, is joy. Laughter, dance, sunshine, sport, art, music, math—whatever lights you up. Joy is vulnerable and open. It lets the light in to heal and detoxify. It is not a state that we achieve only when we are done feeling our trauma, it is something we choose to allow so that we can heal, a little bit at a time. 

In my own denial of joy, I realize that I have denied others the experience and leadership of my joy. My joy is powerful and contagious. Our joy is a gift to ourselves and others. As much as we need bearing witness of our painful stories, our collective experiences of joy can heal us all.

And so, what is it time for at YESS? It is time for a little bit of joy. We have come a long way in 2 1/2 years. We have emerged out of some very hard times and while I know there are more ahead of us, it is time to celebrate and be vulnerable in our joy. 

This good winter, I wish that you give yourselves the permission to feel JOY and celebrate the good things with us, with your loved ones, with your community. 

Together, we can heal, a little bit at a time. 

With my own love and joy,

(header photo by Leroy Schulz)

In the winter months our Armoury Resource Centre operates on extended hours to provide a safe and warm place for youth who might otherwise have to risk the elements outside. We work with other vulnerable youth supporting agencies to determine these hours so that between us we are always providing youth with a safe place and also taking care of frontline youth workers to prevent burnout.

Armoury Resource Centre Winter Hours – effective November 15, 2019 to March 15, 2020:

For youth who are leaving the Armoury Resource Centre to go to another program, we always strive for a “warm handoff” and allow youth to wait indoors for their pickup rather than off property.

Exposure to winter weather is dangerous for individuals experiencing homelessness. You are part of the community keeping vulnerable people safe this winter season.

Here are some ways our city works together to keep everyone safe in times of extreme cold:

• if you see someone on the streets who you believe is in distress, call 211 to speak to the 24/7 diversion team
• additional winter warming sites open throughout the city with extended hours
• in the event that shelters are at or near capacity and extreme cold (-20 or colder) is in the forecast, LRT stations will open as overnight warming sites
• in times of extreme cold, ETS vehicles will not deny passengers without tickets

It takes all of us to keep everyone in our community safe and warm in the winter months. It is a good time to remember how much we can all take care of each other.

This year, YESS was invited to contribute to a special issue of Parity, Australia’s national homelessness publication. In their October issue, Preventing and Sustaining Exits from Youth Homelessness in Canada, there are articles from agencies across Canada including “Changing the Definition of Success” by our own Camiel Friend, Nexus Shelter Team Lead, and Jessica Day, Director of Program Innovations. We are so proud for this opportunity to share the thought leadership of our Programs team in an international publication.

“Understanding A Way Home Canada’s National Roadmap for the Prevention of Youth Homelessness helped us re-evaluate what was needed in order to help our youth successfully reintegrate into communities: YESS and the partners and community around us must provide safety and stability, help build self-worth, help build the tools for resilience, and help to establish a sense of belonging within the community.” 

The article that I wrote with our Director of Program Innovations, Jessica Day, entitled “Changing the Definition of Success” was our way of introducing one of the most imperative aspects of addressing the trauma of our youth:  when we measure progress and outcomes with demographics and stats, we are missing the individualized unique stories of each youth we serve. It was important that we acknowledge the various barriers our youth face in a collective manner and to present this information in a relatable and understanding way to the general population, who may not have experienced these adversities themselves.

These stories are just as important as strategic stats or demographics and, thanks to the National Roadmap for the Prevention of Youth Homelessness, help to educate communities on what work and support is needed.  As well, we were able to portray how the National Framework can and needs to be applied to local agencies to help increase effective services, broaden the outcomes and stories of the youth served, and help to find a collective language and voice between the national research and our local youth stories. The language used between youth and frontline staff, amongst frontline agencies, from frontline to management and agency management to national coalitions and so on, can be a barrier all on its own. We have the ability to translate this in a way that has a clear guideline and understanding not only to our youth, but also to the people in charge of making important decisions on behalf of our youth.

This reciprocal bridge of communication directly impacts the National Roadmap for the Prevention of Youth Homelessness and its success, as well as directly impacting the local success of our individual agency. This article was a wonderful opportunity to have in-depth conversations about barriers, about language, about community goals, and most importantly how to support our youth while maintaining youth-focused strategies.

– Camiel Friend, Nexus Team Lead

Read Camiel’s article and other articles from Canadian frontline youth workers at homelesshub.ca.

Hello everyone, and happy Fall.

I have always thought of Fall and Winter as seasons for rest and reflection. It is the time when we can curl up in our warmest clothes, rest, and build up our resilience for the inevitable challenges that come our way.

Resiliency is a theme that runs pervasively through YESS. We teach the youth about resiliency and self care: about regulating their emotions through breathing, moving their bodies and connecting with their minds, calming their central nervous systems, and building a quiver of tools they can use when facing difficulties. Resiliency is the pot of gold we all seek. We work desperately against an invisible clock that can have trauma and challenges at every hour to help youth choose and begin to learn the techniques and thought processes that build self-control, self-regulation, self-confidence, and self-worth. (In other words, the resiliency to begin to understand that all that has happened to them is not their fault, and to face the next challenges in their life capably, and with their own interests and accountability at the forefront.) Resiliency is typically built from strong, positive attachments to parents, good teachers in positive school environments, safe and positive childhood play and interactions, and a safe, inclusive, role-modelling community. When you have not had these things, and been very hurt at an early age, your resiliency can take on a very different face. It can take on the various masks of coping mechanisms designed to comfort, protect, and hide from the harshest realities: the masks of addiction, abuse, violence, and suicide.

 And here is what I have noticed about resiliency after two years at YESS. While our city’s social workers, youth workers, and support staff are working to help the youth build resiliency, they are depleting their own energy stores, and wearing down their own resiliency. Our city’s frontline youth workers are doing some of the most difficult work you can imagine. They are often concurrently parenting, tutoring, counselling, mediating, de-escalating, and even doing CPR and first aid (ON THE YOUTH THEY ARE PARENTING). Can you imagine the trauma of walking your own teenager through a suicide plan and working each day to help them do their homework, struggling maybe with a learning disability, and then having to administer first aid or Naloxone that night? This is the reality of youth workers. This is our reality. And while the winter months can be restful and reflective, they contain the darkest, coldest months and the deep trauma of the holiday season.

Often, organizations simply do not have the funds or the capacity to provide the counselling, extra benefit support, staff overlap, and training that could truly help build a resilient staff. At YESS, we are in a position to recognize that we cannot afford NOT to take care of the resiliency of those who care for our most vulnerable. We, as a society, keep telling each other it takes a village to raise a child, because of the very fact that parents cannot do it all themselves. And now we need to walk that talk. We need to take care of the very parents who are raising our most vulnerable. 

Just as I have asked you to look closer and with empathy at our youth, I ask you now to see those who serve our city in such a deep and meaningful way and who do so without reward, recognition, and often without the help of the systems and the community they operate within. 

They are my heroes. And I am honoured to serve them. Let us care for them so that they may continue this brave work.

Every youth should have a safe place to call home.  This is our goal, but we cannot do it alone.  You’ve heard the saying, “It takes a village to raise a child”—it takes a community to walk alongside every youth with no place to go, and to ensure no youth ever feels alone.  No one will be forgotten.

We want to change the way our community views homelessness. It is never a choice: the youth who access YESS and other vulnerable youth-supporting agencies have experienced trauma in one form or another, whether it is at home, on the street, or even within our care systems. They do not trust the adult systems or communities that failed them, and they believe that the abuse, neglect, mental illness, or negative experiences that have happened to them are their fault.

Investment in our youth is an investment in our community.  Making an investment in programs, staff, and housing for youth gives them the space to heal, learn to trust, and learn life skills every child should be provided. 

It currently costs just over $6,000 to serve one youth at YESS for one year. Compare this number to the approximately $112,000 it costs our city to serve entrenched and addicted homeless adults. It is also important to note that YESS currently receives just over 20% provincial funding for our operating budget. We spend most of our year fundraising to keep operating.

We need your help—we cannot do this without you.  Look to our future. Help us to give our kids the future we all deserve. A future that will give back to the community that believed in them and never gave up!

You are truly part of the community our youth need. Let’s #healtogether at YESS.