Homeless employment project gets green light
City councillor questions why older users not included
Robin Grant
Northern News Services
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
SideDoor Youth Ministries has been awarded the contract for a new pilot homeless employment program aimed at youth.
In March, council debated how to use the $50,000 set aside in the city's 2017 budget for a trial homelessness program. At the time, most of council supported a model based on a homelessness employment program in Winnipeg.
It involved a local service provider hiring homelessness people of all ages to perform duties, such as picking up garbage and clearing snow and ice from walkways.
But when raised in a municipal services meeting June 12, senior administrative officer Sheila Bassi-Kellett described a program moving forward that was directed at homeless youth ages 16 to 24 - not all ages as originally intended.
When the request for proposals was released in April, Bassi-Kellett said the city received three responses. Out of three responses, the successful proposal from SideDoor Youth Ministries was directed at youth.
She said SideDoor proposed to use the $50,000 with other money from the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. Youth would participate in a five-week employment preparation program followed by a 16-week work placement.
Coun. Adrian Bell voiced concerns that the program was completely different from what councillors had agreed on.
"I do acknowledge that it has laudable objectives but from a strategic point of view, I think it completely misses the mark we were aiming for," he said. "I don't think it's what council unanimously
supported at budget time."
The program, he said, had originally intended to focus on homeless individuals of all ages, which he described as a better fit for Yellowknife's homeless population.
Bell later told Yellowknifer he took issue with city administration not following the parameters city council had agreed upon.
"What I often like to do in this instance, or any other instance, is to take a model that is demonstrated to work somewhere else and try to copy it," he said. "We hadn't had a discussion about other youth-focused models or whether it was targeting the same categories or same situations that the Winnipeg program had been targeting.
The discussion and the support were for a program modeled after the (Winnipeg program). Then we just went in a completely different direction."
Coun. Linda Bussey, however, who chairs the Community Advisory Board, said she thought the program's new objective is an effective way of addressing homelessness in the city.
"I think the youth homelessness issue is increasing in Yellowknife so I think this is a great initiative," Bussey countered. "I think this is even better because we are helping youth."
SideDoor executive director Iris Hamlyn told Yellowknifer the pilot program is designed to complement its housing first program. During the 21-week program, youth ages 15 to 24 will work three hours a day. For the first five weeks, youth will learn skills involved with entering the workforce as well as financial literacy. During the following 16 weeks, they will be employed working three hours a day.
"It will show the youth, the value of working a few hours a day and then incrementally increasing that once the placements are done," she said.
The parameters for the program she proposed were developed, she said, after the challenges SideDoor Youth Ministries faced with a previous employment program.
During the previous program, Hamlyn said youth worked full-time hours. She said they were exhausted by the end of the program and therefore it was not sustainable.
"This would be a longer period of time, we're talking 21 weeks, for them to get into a rhythm of them actually working and seeing a benefit of the work because they will be getting income," she said. "Then over the longer period of time, they will see the benefits."
The program is set to begin for eligible youth July 10.
