In September 2019 Lee entered Canada with her two children, where she claimed refugee protection a month later. With the help of some friends here and there she was able to get temporary shelter in Kitchener but soon had to move to Hamilton to find accommodation which fit within the very little amount of social assistance that she was able to access through Ontario Works.
Fatima is a 39 year old woman who came to Canada in 2018 with her husband and two daughters. Fatima came to The Working Centre with a lot of concern and a sadness in her eyes. It had been 3 months since she stopped working and she had no income, and the weight of her commitments was overwhelming her.
The Integrated Circle of Care is a fluid and collaborative approach followed by workers from different agencies weaving through St. John’s Kitchen. Within this approach, staff members from each agency are aware of their specific personal roles. However, the high level of collaboration between workers means that people can approach any worker, without knowing their agency association or specific role, and still receive support – either that worker will support the person directly, or they will introduce the person to another worker who can support the person more appropriately.
This approach makes relationships more natural and support more accessible. Workers from different agencies are easily approachable, meaning that people build relationships with multiple workers. Having relationships with different workers is important to a person’s support – it makes support from a trusted source easy to find, and means that people have a choice of worker to approach in any given situation.
In order to maintain a circle of care around a person, workers from different agencies ask for consent from the person for information to be shared between workers. Continuous communication between workers helps to ensure that people do not fall into gaps between services, and also that services are not duplicated.
