Thank you.
Others would be better able than Salus to define at a general statistical level the needs of people living in poverty. CMHA has done that very well this morning. But what we can speak to are the needs of people receiving and waiting for Salus services.
Our services help to alleviate some of the problems associated with poverty, and in particular, the extreme forms of social exclusion associated with mental illness.
We provide a range of bilingual services. In addition, we have a specific team that provides community accompaniment services for our francophone clients. This service is attuned to the specific nature of the francophone culture and community in our region.
In terms of access, there are really three main programs and routes into Salus service in both official languages.
Need far exceeds supply in all programs. Here is some basic information about access, as well as three examples, modified to protect the privacy of three clients who made it into our programs and whose lives have been transformed as a result.
For permanent supportive housing, for which we have 186 small, self-contained apartments, the waiting list is 797. There are 186 apartments, 797 people waiting. Turnover is negligible, and the few vacancies are often taken by people graduating from our transitional rehabilitation programs.
“Karen”, our newest tenant, is a deaf women with severe anxiety and depression, and co-occurring substance abuse. Because she is lucky enough to be deaf and we had a vacancy in a specially adapted apartment, she only had to wait five years instead of the more usual eight. She's lived in shelters and multiple rooming houses since 1996. She grew up in eight different foster homes and a residential school. She also has a Salus case manager. Two case managers have learned sign language to serve this client group. For Karen, this promises to be the start of her recovery process.
We don't keep a waiting list for our intensive rehabilitation programs, which serve 25 clients at any one time, including ten specifically from the forensic units of the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group. Referral has to be from the hospital, and demand is insatiable. We have to turn down many suitable potential clients.
“Dave” is now in his fifties. He came to the Fisher transitional program after 20 years in Brockville Psychiatric Hospital. Before that, starting in adolescence, he had multiple hospitalizations and minor brushes with the law. Like many Salus clients, he has addictions as well as mental health issues. When he joined the program, he had to be taught the basics: basic grooming, eating in an acceptable manner, as well as how to make adult choices—you don't get to make many of those in a psychiatric ward. After 12 months at Fisher, he moved to a Salus apartment. With the help of a case manager, he's now coping with independence, he's made a few friends, he's avoiding hospital, and he's happy.
For our intensive case management program, we share a waiting list through a partnership with all the local agencies offering this service. Clients joining the Salus program have generally waited around two years.
“Theresa”, now in her thirties, has a personality disorder and an eating disorder, as well as a history of abuse. She joined the Salus case management program in 2001 and left it recently, after about eight years of hard work in a variety of areas. When she left us, she had a community college diploma. She's now moved out of Salus housing as well as our case management program, and is married, with a child, and is no longer living in poverty.
People with mental illness should have options around the way in which they receive services, but for many, the Salus model works best. For them, appropriate service includes living in a building where on-site support is available to help tenants create a mutually supportive community. This reinforces the benefits of the one-on-one work of case management. It provides a solid base from which to build broader community connections.
Without access to Salus services or the services of agencies similar to Salus, poverty and social exclusion will remain a reality for people with serious mental illness. Access to our services does not in itself resolve poverty issues, but it does reduce some of the negative and more extreme aspects of poverty. For some, recovery can happen to the point where they're able to move fully out of poverty and into the mainstream community.