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Alison Harris

The Power of Pets

I have a huge passion for pets, and have been witness to them bringing people together in magical ways on many occasions. When I first started working at the University Avenue (UA) interim housing project, one of the things I absolutely loved was that folks were welcome to bring their pets to live with them. Knowing how deeply attached many community members are to their pets, it brought me immense joy to know they didn’t need to be separated from them or choose to remain on the street to stay with their pets.

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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.