I met Kevin Dickman in the early 1990s and was his community support worker on and off for two decades. Kevin’s body was pulled from the Don River on Oct. 5, after he lost his housing again. His death adds to the scores of homeless people who have died in Toronto this year.
But people like Kevin need more than shelter. They need programs that can connect them to others in the community. I’ve mentored and worked with many community members who initially connected with our programs as clients receiving services. The impact of such involvement is literally life changing.
We barely talk about the lack of basic support for the homeless and the marginalized — things like shelter beds, housing, food security and accessible health care. And we almost never talk about the lack of opportunities for something pro-social and meaningful for the homeless and marginalized to do.
I’ve been fortunate as a community worker to have been involved in work that, to me, unquestionably demonstrates the potential and long-lasting, positive benefits of providing opportunities for the most marginalized individuals in our communities.
Most people like to learn; everyone wants to be healthier and feel better. Most of us seek connections with other humans who won’t judge us, where we feel accepted and have a sense of belonging.
Funding for programming, for actual engagement with others — especially those who are not easy to engage with — is the last to be offered and first to be cut.
What does get funded is reduced to a one-on-one exchange — a client comes in with a need, a worker attempts to address the need. Such needs include counselling, harm reduction tools, assistance with housing, income or legal issues, and health care.
This is all important and needed, but people also need to come together, to share a meal, create art together, to support each other and talk about things that affect them, things that could help them cope with the challenges they experience.
I’ve facilitated peer training programs and psycho-social support groups for nearly 20 years. Graduates of the Crack Users Project (a support and training program for people who use crack) from 12 years ago are still working in the community as peer workers, harm reduction workers and in other supportive roles.
More recently, I helped to develop a community hepatitis C treatment and support program for homeless and underhoused substance users that runs weekly support groups and a year-long peer training program with opportunities to be hired as a community worker with the program.
Today, all the hepatitis C groups are facilitated by people who came through the program as clients. They are now formally hired as workers in the program. They facilitate groups and group activities, teach life skills and health promotion. They do public education and teach new classes in the peer training program.
These group programs don’t cost a lot of money. They are cheap, even before you consider the consistent positive and long-term outcomes they produce.
It’s through participating in meaningful group activities that makes people feel better about themselves and through which we can soften the impact of the “otherness” and the stigma that marginalized individuals experience.
I’ve seen many people cross over from hopelessness to hopefulness to success. I see and work with people who started as peer workers and are still depending on community and social services, but they are working, often long hours, without benefits and low pay. They are often doing the hardest work — as overdose response workers, outreach workers and shelter workers.
Surely we can find the resources to invest in more programs that actually engage people and invest in community development and especially in those people among us who are hard to engage.
There are many dedicated and talented community workers, peer or otherwise, who know how to develop programs and engage with people in a way that is human, positive and hopeful.
We really need the decision-makers and funders to consider the benefits of providing food, transportation and human hours to facilitate opportunities to bring people together, to support the growth of healthier individuals and communities through inclusion and participation in meaningful activities. It can be literally life-saving.
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