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Louisa House Update

By David Ramirez Bumaguin, Supportive Housing Worker

Published September 2024

This month we warmly welcomed two young men from Ethiopia, to Louisa Street. The keys to their rooms were a symbol of their new home in our community. 

I showed them the emergency exits and the basement with washers and dryers. I talked to them about boundaries and sharing cultural experiences that will help them grow, strengthen, and become part of this friendly community. You should absorb the best from this culture, combine it with your own, and put it into practice.

I advised them and explained a few concepts that this society appreciates. Tolerance and behaviour are critical keys when you arrive as a newcomer. I learned this back in 2001 when I supported the Lancaster Hospitality House when over 50 people a year were supported into KW. It takes work to minimize/eradicate your own bias about others. Humans sometimes assume that one group is better than the other, but unfortunately, that is not the case. Each of us is unique, with strengths, weaknesses and fallacies.

However, we need to learn about each other and respect where we live. Working toward a Tikkum Olam is not easy, but most of it depends on us. Here, we learn about you, them and the earth; we all deserve to live intertwined in harmony.

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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.

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