Fresh Start helping families through pandemic
mliebenberg@prairiepost.com
The Fresh Start program continues to provide support services to families and youth during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our essential services such as our youth home is continuing to operate while adhering to procedures laid out by public health,” Fresh Start Executive Director Sally Wiens said. “Our education component is being offered remotely, and then our family and parenting services and counselling are still available via telephone and video chat.”
Fresh Start is a non-profit organization that provides support services to children, youth and families in the Swift Current area.
The public health measures to reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection made it necessary to close the Fresh Start office for public access and to look at alternative ways to continue the provision of services.
These youth, family and counselling services will usually be provided through inperson interaction. It was a difficult but necessary decision for the organization to take that step to close the office for the time being to the public.
“For me it was really tough, because you know that people are going to be stressed by it, but I also have to look at the safety of our staff and look at protecting their health,” she said. “So the right thing to do was to close the doors, but it was a tough decision to make, for sure.”
The transition to provide services remotely through telephone and video chat required some adjustments, but she felt satisfied with the outcome.
“There was a learning curve involved for us, and the same for people wanting to access the service, but we’re finding that it works really well,” she said. The availability of their services by phone helps to ensure accessibility for those who might not have access to the internet at the moment.
“Most people today have a phone, and we do one-on-one on the phone,” she said. “So we’re providing family services via phone, there’s a lot of check-in via phone for our education services, and there’s certainly uptake with the phone with counselling services. So it’s used in all three of those arenas, in the youth arena, in the family arena, as well as the counselling arena.” Fresh Start’s youth services include mentorship and counselling, and an individualized program of alternative education for youth through a partnership with Chinook School Division.
“We’re working with the same students right now, and nothing has changed in our educational service because of COVID,” she noted. “We have a teacher and a teacher aide, and school is delivered pretty one-on-one for kids that are accessing that service.”
Fresh Start also operates JP’s Place, a home in Swift Current for homeless male youth. This is considered to be an essential service during the pandemic.
“The home service is no different than what any family is struggling with right now,” she said. “Their children can’t go out. Our kids are tied to the home. It becomes more difficult when people are confined. So we’re experiencing some of the same things of any other home with children where they’re confined.”
The Fresh Start family services program provides a variety of support services to strengthen and maintain the family unit.
“We’re still providing family services, such as parenting services, right now,” she said. “I think it’s important, because families are at home together all day long. We have a social worker on staff that is very able to lend support in times like this to parents at home with children.”
Fresh Start’s newest service, the En Route walk-in counselling service, was launched last fall in Swift Current.
This free service was also expanded to Maple Creek in early March, shortly before the pandemic restrictions were implemented in Saskatchewan.
“It has proven to be is a valuable and necessary service in our community as well as out in Maple Creek,” Wiens noted. “We weren’t able to do a lot of clinics in Maple Creek. We did four prior to having to close our doors there, but we certainly put the word out there.”
This counselling service is also continuing during the pandemic as a remote and confidential service provided through telephone and video chat. The goal of this service remains the same as before the pandemic, which is to provide counselling that is readily available to people when they need it.
This service is there to support anyone who might experience additional stress due to the pandemic situation.
“The issues revolving from COVID-19 are stress, anxiety, worry, fear for the future, relationship issues,” she said. “All of those are representative of issues that we deal with at Fresh Start. However, I think COVID-19 has really ramped up the panic piece for people. They can’t see what the future holds, they lost hope, they become afraid – that’s the piece that’s probably escalated.”
The experience of providing various services remotely during the pandemic might be useful to Fresh Start in the future during certain times of the year.
“I think about people in more remote areas wanting to access our services in the dead of winter,” she said. “The service will become so much more accessible, knowing that they can phone. We haven’t made any decisions around this, but we’re certainly looking at this as becoming more accessible to people in the future.”
In the meantime, Fresh Start will continue to be there for children, youth or families requiring support during the pandemic.
“One of the things about Fresh Start is we’ll continue to do this going forward, just in a very steady manner, trying to provide some calm amidst the chaos,” Wiens said. “I think that’s a great service to offer in the middle of a pandemic like COVID-19.”