Salt Spring Island Community Services welcomed the news from Island Health this week that they are increasing funding for mental health supports that have, so far, been unavailable or underfunded on Salt Spring. Island Health announced that they are increasing investment in mental health and substance use care provision on Salt Spring and the […]
Core Inn Energy Audit
April 28, 2015 by
The Core Inn underwent an interesting review of it’s energy efficiency which included such high-tech processes of photographing every wall with an infrared camera and conducting a blower test to discover air leakage. We included a teaching component in the process for a group of Gulf Island Secondary students. The report has just landed on […]
United Way Funding
April 28, 2015 by
SSICS will receive $ 100,000 for each of the next two years from United Way of Greater Victoria. This is a significant reduction from past years, and it required some quick and difficult analysis to determine where the funding would be best allocated. We determined that a simple formula of $ 75,000 for Mental Health […]
People’s Roots
April 28, 2015 by
With our garden activities off and running for the season we have undertaken an updating of the communications strategy including a new name and image. As this program area has expanded we have moved from “Food Bank” to “Food Security” to “Food Programs” (all rather bland) to a more interesting name “People Roots: Growing […]
Housing First
April 28, 2015 by
Our Housing First program hosted a very successful forum on homelessness. The invitation only event was attended by many community stakeholders, politicians (Elizabeth May, Gary Holman, Wayne MacIntyre, Peter Grove) and service providers. We are pulling together notes from that meeting and planning a follow up session focusing specifically on support services that are required […]
Salt Spring Island Celebrates Youth Week
April 27, 2015 by
Community partners across Salt Spring Island are joining to support Salt Spring Youth Week. Salt Spring Community Services and the Core Inn and Climbing Wall, PARC and the Rainbow Road Pool, the Salt Spring Island Library, Country Grocer and Thrifty’s are sponsoring the week in tandem with the 21st annual BC Youth Week running May […]
New Housing Needs Survey Highlights Local Challenges
April 20, 2015 by
A family housing survey completed last month confirmed that many Salt Spring Island households are challenged to find suitable and secure housing within their financial means. The survey, conducted by Salt Spring Community Services, considered the full range of long term housing needs – from very low-income households looking for rentals to dual income households wanting to […]
RCMP donation
March 23, 2015 by
The RCMP has kindly offered to donate the annual rebate they receive from Co-op for fuel purchases back to the community. They have identified domestic violence as a general area to direct the funds. SSICS has offered to establish a restricted fund for this purpose, and use the existing Victim Services and ICAT programs as […]
Groundskeeping
March 23, 2015 by
For the past number of years the groundskeeping and landscaping at SSICS sites has been blended with the community gardening operations. As our gardening and food security activities have increased this has been more challenging. This year we will revert back to having these functions separated and groundskeeping and landscaping will be contracted out to another […]
Cold Weather Shelter
March 23, 2015 by
The cold weather shelter wrap up for the season on March 15. Over the remaining two weeks of March the shelter will open only if the weather takes a turn for the worse. Time will be taken over the next few weeks to help individuals who have been frequent shelter users make this transition. The milder […]
