Salt Spring Island youth are getting more supports for mental health and substance abuse prevention with an expanded program area at Island Community Services.
A recent awarding of an Island Health Youth Resiliency Grant will allow the agency to bolster the harm reduction component of the Youth Centre at The Core into a key program area.
The Youth Centre is a central program within the youth services at Island Community Services, providing a safe and supportive place for youth aged 11-18 after school from 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM at The Core Building at 134 McPhillips Avenue in Ganges. The program is available for drop-in with no registration or appointment necessary. It serves free and at-cost food and features planned program activities.
“The Child and Youth Mental Health team has included a position focused on substance use counselling for many years,” explains Kyla Duncan, Clinical Director at Island Community Services. “This will strengthen and formalize connections between that and the more casual Core Youth Centre dedicated programming and targeted events to reach a broader swath of youth.”
For Kirsty Chalmers, the Youth and Family Substance Use Counsellor at Island Community Services, it’s a full circle experience. She was one of the youth on the original Board of Directors for the Core Inn Youth Project Society when it first opened the Youth Drop-In and was later Coordinator for the program for many years.
The building and the Drop-In program were assumed by Island Community Services in 2007 when the societies amalgamated. Since that time the building, now named The Core, has expanded the youth program to include the new robust youth counselling program, one component of which is the substance use counselling.
“It’s so important to meet youth where they’re at as many won’t reach out for support when they really need it,” said Chalmers. “The Core Youth Centre is a great opportunity for prevention work where we can actively engage with youth in an informal way while providing them with support, information and resources.”
In addition to increased interaction between the Youth and Family Substance Use Counselling and the Youth Centre, a key aspect of the project will be a series of trainings held with youth centre staff and youth team counsellors to establish common understanding and language regarding harm reduction, risk, cultural competency and trauma informed service design and delivery.
The project will be providing opportunities for youth identified to be vulnerable to participate in peer support and adult mentoring related to health, resilience, empowerment and harm reduction.
“The teen years are when people transition from relying primarily on family-based supports to community-based ones,” said Duncan. “There are times when that transition may be met with a lack of available supports for youth in the community or, alternatively, unhealthy ones. The exercise here is to establish an approach that can be discussed with parents and others as necessary, based on youth empowerment and resiliency, so there is a common understanding of the principles of an activity-based harm reduction project.”
Activity-based harm reduction and substance use prevention refers to integrating and embedding harm reduction and substance use prevention principles into inclusive, high energy and engaging activities to build youth leadership and awareness of healthy lifestyle choices.
Island Community Services is a multi-service organization established fifty years ago on Salt Spring Island providing forty programs in eight service areas. One of the largest and fastest growing program areas is Child, Youth and Family with programs focusing on early childhood and family development at Family Place on Park Drive, Youth mental health and the Core Youth Centre at The Core on McPhillips as well as family development on Saturna, Mayne, Galiano and Pender Islands.
Youth mental health services are complemented by others focused on older demographics at Island Community Services through Community Counselling for adults with barriers to accessing services as well as Senior Peer Counselling delivered through the Active Aging program at the agency.
“Mental health supports are a critical service for every demographic,” said Duncan, “but nowhere is it more important than with vulnerable youth. By recognizing the opportunity to reach those youth who are not engaging specifically with mental health services, this promises to make a real impact for harm reduction and substance use prevention here on Salt Spring Island.”
