Thank you very much for including me in today's presentation to the committee.
I represent a multi-service social services charity called Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows Community Services. We have a charitable history of serving the communities of Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows for over 46 years. On an annual basis, we serve approximately 12,000 individuals by offering more than 31 different programs that address needs in the community. Our client-centred services support the various ages and stages and circumstances of life, including child development, parenting, victim services, mental health services, support for people with developmental disabilities, youth and parents in conflict, aboriginal services, and seniors services.
Our programs and services embrace five key values: community, compassion, excellence, growth, and respect. For the most part, our organization serves as a safety net for individuals and families who strive to live successful lives despite overwhelming obstacles, including risks relating to homelessness, poverty, food security, mental health, isolation, and struggling to cope. A high percentage of our clients live in poverty, facing complex needs and challenges.
According to the United Way of the Lower Mainland's free helpline, the top areas of need identified by Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows residents were housing and homelessness, substance use, health, mental health, and government services.
As stated by Ontario's minister responsible for poverty reduction strategy, poverty has many faces and there are countless circumstances that lead to poverty, but we know there is one overarching path out of poverty, which is realizing human potential. Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows Community Services has a mission to support and empower individuals and families to realize their potential and achieve self-reliance.
I'd like to highlight our work with young victims, youth, and seniors. With the help of community partnerships, we offer a program called “Alisa's wish”. Alisa's Wish Child and Youth Advocacy Centre provides a child-friendly environment for children and youth who experience sexual and physical violence. They receive support services at one location from one integrated team of professionals. The reason I'm raising this particular program is that Alisa's Wish and other advocacy centres like it have received federal funding, which is critical to the development and sustainability of these valuable community programs. I want to stress the positive impacts that this centre is having in our community, such as improved forensic interviewing, improved case information presented to crown counsel, and improved outcomes for young victims and their non-offending family members. For example, by offering trauma-informed services that are time sensitive and accessible, we're aiding the prevention of isolation, anxiety, substance use, and other at-risk behaviours that may develop when trauma is not properly supported and addressed.
In addition to service outcomes, I also want to make the business case that when the federal government invests in grants to non-profit organizations, the overall financial investment can have two or three or more times the value because of our ability to harness other professionals within an integrated model and our ability to fundraise and engage donors and volunteers—all of this compounding the government's investment in our community's children and youth.
Another preventive initiative that we're leading is the Youth Wellness Centre. Again, this is a community collaboration that focuses on the needs of young people with mild to moderate mental illness and substance use. Our community came together identifying the growing number of children and youth with anxiety, social anxiety, and substance use, including self-medicating and self-harm, and the list goes on. We envisioned a barrier-free, youth-friendly location where parents and youth could access responsive services and, based strictly on community donations and in-kind space provided by the City of Maple Ridge, we opened the Youth Wellness Centre this past April. We have provided psychiatric assessment, mental health, and primary care services for more than 120 youth between the ages of eight and 24 years.
I want to stress the urgent need for funding for this project, which represents innovative clinical and medical practices. We have moved away from the notion of “do more with less” to an approach of “do differently.” Innovations such as the use of telehealth capability, digital communication, and clinical assessment tools and corporate sponsorships are the way of the future.
Finally, I'd like to speak to the vulnerability of seniors in our community. According to Fraser Health reports, incidents of dementia, depression, and anxiety among our older adults in Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows are higher than the region's average. We also have more seniors living alone, 36% compared to Fraser Health's overall of 26%. According to our community partners, a temporary shelter run by RainCity Housing reports 10% of its clients are seniors, and the food bank reports that seniors make up 22% of its regular users.
The impact of poverty on seniors is overwhelming. We hear from seniors who share the daily meals on wheels delivery because they can only afford a meal for one, or who have to make the choice between food and medication in their monthly expenses due to the high housing costs.
Living in poverty impacts the rate at which an individual's circumstance can quickly decline. For example, a senior accessing our community law advocacy program rapidly went from having a stable home environment where he was living meagrely on Canada pension and a small private pension, as he had worked his entire adult life, to living in a shelter. In this situation, he faced challenges with an unethical landlord and an issue with the delivery of his pension cheques. Without a cushion of savings, he completely lost the security of his home in a matter of days.
We find there is a gap that exists between the services that are available to seniors and seniors actually being aware of and accessing the benefits that are intended for them. I want to stress the importance of community-based programs that provide accessible, face-to-face programs, such as the poverty law advocacy program and seniors outreach programs that reduce barriers to access. Online applications cannot be the only option.
As an example, if you're a senior and you want to access the online Canada Pension Plan disability application, you would need to fully understand and complete not one, not two, but six separate online booklets. If you're referred by the ministry, you complete an additional one. That's seven booklets in total. A task such as this is simply overwhelming for vulnerable seniors.
In closing, I'd like to summarize the valuable role that non-profits serve in poverty reduction strategies, particularly when focusing on prevention and resiliency. We support important preventive and responsive services such as Alisa's Wish and a youth wellness centre, which enhance a child's and youth's potential for stability, growth, employment, and ultimately contributing to society. Also, it must be made a priority to support vulnerable seniors by offering community-based programs and systems and processes that close the gap for seniors to access and benefit from the programs that are intended for them.
Thank you.