2010 Innovation Award Winners

En Français

In this fifth year of Eva’s Initiatives Award for Innovation, three winners are being recognized for their outstanding work with homeless youth. Eva’s Initiatives received 31 applications from organizations working with homeless youth across Canada. A seven member panel, knowledgeable about services for homeless youth, reviewed all applications and selected three winners from among the many applicants with impressive and innovative projects underway in communities across the country.

The three winners for 2010, recognized for their models of integrated supports for homeless youth, are:

• Covenant House Vancouver & The Inner City Youth Mental Health Project
• Boys and Girls Clubs of Calgary for The Infinity Project
• The Street Youth Planning Collaborative, Hamilton

Our Sponsor

The Eva's Initiatives Award for Innovation is generously sponsored by CIBC. Each winning organization receives a prize of $5,000, presented at an awards ceremony in their community.

Background

How do we Apply?

Review Panel

2010 Winners

Past Winners

 

Background

Eva's Initiatives and CIBC have teamed up to offer three annual awards for organizations working with homeless and at risk youth. Award winners:

• Demonstrate innovation in delivering services to homeless youth;
• Successfully use partnerships to develop, implement or operate services;
• Deliver services that help youth who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless achieve greater self–sufficiency and reduce their chances of experiencing homelessness in the future;
• Offer services that integrate two or more of the following: housing, education, vocational training, employment, health and addictions supports, life skills, or other interventions aimed at assisting homeless and at risk youth to become self-sufficient.

Why offer an Award for Innovation?
The goal of the awards is to recognize other organizations that are doing innovative work with youth who are homeless or at-risk of homelessness.

What does Eva's mean by 'innovation'?
Innovation means different things to different people. For these awards, innovation means:

• New methods for addressing a community need are established, resulting in improved services aimed at helping homeless youth develop self-sufficiency.
• Something new develops in the community as a result of an initiative. (Some examples are: new partners or sectors in your community become involved in addressing homelessness; services that were previously unavailable now are available; or an initiative results in increased public awareness and understanding of youth homelessness.)
• Partnerships develop between services for homeless youth and other sectors such as business, labour, industry, financial services, education and training, government, and faith communities.
• New ways to more effectively manage services for young homeless individuals are identified and implemented.

How do we Apply?

Watch this Web site for details. Information about the 2011 awards and an application form will be available by September 2010.

Review Panel

Eva's Initiatives is grateful for the assistance received from the six members of the review panel. This cross-Canada panel diligently reviewed and evaluated all applications, and were responsible for selecting the three winners. The members of the review panel for the 2009 awards were:

Céline Bellot	Associate Professor/ Professeur adjointe école de service social Université de Montréal
Rachel Gray	Director of National Initiatives for Eva's Initiatives
Brian Einarson	Community Facilitator, Social Planning Dept, City of Red Deer
Darrell Lechman	Saskatoon Youth Community Arts Programming
Bruce Pearce	Community Development, St. John's Community Advisory Committee on Homelessness
April Williams	Grace Family Services
Robert Wilmot	Manager, Broadway Youth Resource Centre

2010 Winners:

Covenant House Vancouver & The Inner City Youth Mental Health Project (Vancouver, BC)

Covenant House Vancouver and psychiatrists from St. Paul’s Hospital joined forces in 2007 to launch The Inner City Youth Mental Health Project (ICYMHP). This initiative is designed to respond to the needs of homeless and runaway youth living with mental illness in downtown Vancouver.

Covenant House provides emergency and support services for street-involved youth, aged 16-24, including street outreach, a drop-in, hot meals, shelter, transitional housing, and mental health and addictions support. St. Paul’s Hospital is an acute care, teaching and research hospital in downtown Vancouver.

A core principle of ICYMP is to divert youth with mental illness away from hospital and other emergency services and meet their needs in the community through an assertive outreach model. The youth targeted for this intervention are those struggling with illnesses such as psychosis, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety.

ICYMHP provides youth with access to immediate on-site treatment for mental illness. The service is coordinated by two in-house mental health clinicians employed by Covenant House Vancouver and delivered by a team of six psychiatrists from St. Paul’s Hospital. The psychiatric team provides service in two different Covenant House locations, with a case load that includes approximately half of all youth in the shelter at any given time. Young people in the mental health project are also supported by other Covenant House programs, including case management, the transitional housing program, drug and alcohol counselling, and life-skills training

ICYMHP is innovative in that psychiatric services are being made available to homeless youth where and when they need them. The project offers the opportunity to proactively address mental illness among homeless youth and avoid hospitalization. In diagnosing mental illness and helping youth follow through with a treatment plan, ICYMHP is key to improving youth’s readiness to access and manage housing for themselves.

Helping youth secure and retain affordable and safe housing is a key component of services provided by Covenant House to support the ICYMHP. Housing outreach workers liaise with local community partners to find safe and secure housing for the youth. Staff also help the youth develop independent living skills such as cooking, cleaning, and budgeting.

The uniqueness of this program lies in its multi-tiered approach to mental health care for homeless youth. Rather than one-off consultations with mental health workers, through Covenant House, youth regularly have access to a team of psychiatrists while being supported through case management and continuum of community services.

Visit www.covenanthousebc.org for more

Boys and Girls Clubs of Calgary for The Infinity Project (Calgary, AB)

The Boys and Girls Clubs of Calgary Infinity Project, is a “housing first” program for youth who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. The project works with youth to help create a permanent home in the community of their choice and then wraps supports around them to help maintain their housing.

The housing first approach provides youth with financial support to help them quickly access permanent housing. Youth are supported in locations across the city through the use of convertible leases.

Once housed, support workers connect with the youth to facilitate education, youth engagement, enhance relationships, develop life skills, and promote emotional healing. This use of support workers allows each youth to have an advocate and supportive adult to connect them to community resources, a responsible person to give advice, an encourager and an individual to be on the other end of the phone to answer questions or to listen. Living arrangements, expectations, and goals are tailored to the individual, and the project recognizes that as youth acquire the skills for more independent living, their service needs may change, but their place of residence does not need to.

This project is innovative in that the first goal is to provide youth with financial support as a pre-requisite to securing permanent housing. In this way financial support becomes the foundational pillar that supports the other essential parts of life which together ensure a smooth transition to adulthood. From a secure housing base, youth can have greater success in attaining educational, employment, life skills and other goals.

Visit www.boysandgirlsclubsofcalgary.ca for more

The Street Youth Planning Collaborative (Hamilton, ON)

The goal of the Street Youth Planning Collaborative (SYPC) is to develop a seamless and comprehensive continuum of services to address the needs of street-involved youth in Hamilton. SYPC is comprised of directors from five Hamilton organizations who are mandated to work directly with homeless youth. They are: Good Shepherd Youth Services, Living Rock Ministries, Wesley Urban Ministries, Catholic Family Services, Alternatives for Youth. The Social Planning and Research Council provides community development support to the collaborative. Aside from its member agencies, SYPC also encompasses two critical reference groups – the Street-Involved Youth Network (comprised of front-line workers) and the Street Youth Involvement Committee (comprised of youth).

Over the past five years this collaborative has completed a needs assessment, obtained funding, and developed programs to build an effective street-involved youth service system. The concrete successes of the initiative include ten pilot projects, including two transitional housing projects – one for street-involved youth and one for young mothers and their babies.

What is innovative about this initiative is its success in fostering is a new collaborative way of working. SYPC members focus on what is best for youth and the community’s network of services, rather than what is best for their individual agencies. They work together to obtain funding for program development and allow that funding to go to the agency best suited for the task. Instead of competing for resources, they are united in their common goal of developing and coordinating a comprehensive service system for street-involved youth.

The group meets monthly and communicates regularly between meetings.

For more info www.sprc.hamilton.on.ca

Past Winners:

2009 Winners:

• Groupe communautaire l'itinéraire for the initiative Le magDVD le 3e Œil (Montréal, QC)
• The Laing House Association for the program Youth Speak : Breaking Down Stigma One Classroom at a Time (Halifax, NS)
• Parkland Youth Homes Society for Street Ties Youth Outreach (Red Deer, AB)

2008 Winners:

• SIDA/AIDS Moncton for the Youth Asset Program (Moncton, NB)
• YWCA of Greater Toronto for Peel Youth Village Residential Democratic Living Program (Mississauga, ON)
• Coming Home Society for Young Wolves Lodge (Vancouver, BC)

2007 Winners:

• Okanagan Boys and Girls Clubs: Kelowna Downtown Youth Centre
• Saskatoon Community Youth Arts Programming Inc.: Urban Canvas Project
• Les Maisons Transitionnelles 03 for their housing and support program for young parents

2006 Winners:

• Broadway Youth Resource Centre
• Mères et Monde (Québec City)
• SKETCH Working Arts for Street-involved and Homeless Youth

2009 Winners:

Groupe communautaire l'itinéraire : Le magDVD le 3e Œi (Montréal, QC)

Le Groupe communautaire L'Itinéraire is a non-profit organization that develops social enterprise projects with the goal of improving the standard of living of Montréal's homeless population and those with alcohol and drug addictions. The mission of the organization is to develop autonomy, knowledge and creativity among individuals who have struggled due to homelessness and being marginalized. L'Itinéraire helps people reclaim their place in society and develop self esteem by participating in tangible projects.

Le magDVD le 3e Œil aims to facilitate the social reintegration of street youth aged 18 to 30 years or those who are at risk of becoming street involved. The strategy is to train youth in video production and journalism. The production and sale of a magazine in DVD format is a way to reconnect with a vulnerable population that is very interested in multimedia. The initiative provides an alternative to panhandling, a way to feel valued, and work experience. The result is an information magazine about the experience of youth and their battle with addictions and disengagement. The magazine itself is a tool to promote understanding of youth culture and reduce prejudices.

The approach includes partnerships with social workers as well as a team of professionals for training the youth in multimedia. The initiative includes working with youth around addictions prevention, life skills, developing healthy life habits, and preventing the negative effects of street life. Begun in 2005, the project has resulted in 5 editions of the DVD magazine. In all, 120 youth directly participated and 4000 copies of each edition were distributed in addition to distribution through our website www.3eoeil.com.

The Laing House Association: Youth Speak : Breaking Down Stigma One Classroom at a Time (Hailifax, NS)

Laing House is a support centre for youth living with mental illness. The youth have a diagnosis of mood, anxiety and/or psychotic disorder. When a young person experiences a mental illness it is almost impossible to balance school, friends and a job. Laing House helps youth rebuild their lives and learn how to effectively manage their illness.

Youth Speak is an educational initiative that targets junior high, high school and university students. The model is peer-to-peer interactive workshops led by young mental health consumers who are successfully navigating through life with a mental illness. They model recovery and demonstrate hope. This approach aims to increase knowledge and understanding around mental illness, raise awareness of available resources and treatments, reduce stigma and isolation and encourage youth to seek help. Most importantly, this program encourages dialogue about youth mental health issues. It reaches out to a vulnerable at-risk population.

Workshop facilitators are able to quickly engage and connect with the students as they courageously share their personal stories. They convey experiential knowledge of the issues, myths and facts. Many have lived through the high school experience while dealing with mental illness. The stories told in their own voices elicit questions from youth in an atmosphere made comfortable by the facilitator's honesty and openness. Compassion, understanding and increased awareness are promoted through this project. For more info www.lainghouse.org.

Parkland Youth Homes Society: Street Ties Youth Outreach (Red Deer, AB)

Parkland Youth Homes is a private non–profit organization providing a continuum of services to young people and their families in Central Alberta. Services include: residential and day treatment programs, walk–in clinic, counselling, caregiver support, group homes and youth outreach program.

Street Ties Youth Outreach seeks to divert youth from street involvement that may lead to drug addiction, crime and sexual exploitation. Pillars of the program include focussing on education, crisis support and early intervention; connecting youth with appropriate community resources; and offering youth a safe and non-judgemental space as a first step in supporting healthier lifestyle choices.

Street Ties Youth Outreach consists of: (1) a drop-in centre targeting at-risk youth 12 to 21; (2) an outreach program with workers on the street employing harm reduction strategies, providing referrals, and offering non-judgemental support; (3) Art in the Park, a summertime outreach program that attracts street-involved youth and provides opportunities for positive self expression; and (4) educational presentations to students in grades 7 to 12 on the issue of sexual exploitation, stages of recruitment, and the risk factors that may lead to a youth becoming entrenched in street life.

The drop-in centre is the only one of its kind in Red Deer. It provides resources to youth who are outside of the mainstream and typically exist un-noticed and unheard. Outreach workers advocate on behalf of the youth using the drop-in centre, thereby putting a spotlight on the existence of youth at-risk in Red Deer. For more info www.parklandyouthhomes.ca.