Hawaii. Land of magic. A place where dreams are built and lives bounce to the daily tune of Rainbow Radio. It is a land of beauty and harsh realities, rich in history and culture, and I don’t mean the glorification of Captain Cook (the first westerner to invade Hawaii), although he is part of Hawaii’s history.
On October 23, Barbara Hall, former Toronto mayor and current chairperson for the National Strategy on Community Safety and Crime Prevention, spoke at a day-long workshop on safer communities. Not only did she focus on crime prevention but also provided insights into the notion of what it means to be a community.
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.
