Thank you.
My name is Carl Cadogan. I am the executive director at Reception House Waterloo Region.
I am relatively new in this position. I started at the end of March—up to that point Bert Lobe had run the organization—and came on to help the organization plan strategically where they wanted to go. Then the Syrian refugee crisis happened, and the focus for the organization from November onward was looking at how we could serve the Syrian refugees.
Historically, Reception House served 250 to 300 refugees a year, so this influx of the Syrians was a very changed reality for the organization. We are one of the organizations that, like many, housed the refugees in temporary housing. We worked with Howard Johnson Hotel. We received people daily. One of the very positive things about not only the partnership that Tara spoke about but having the refugees in one area is that we were able to provide a wide range of services at the same time.
Housing has been the major issue. I think the region has had very low housing stock availability, and prices and costs for housing have been very expensive in the region. Working with landlords and with the community was a way in which the organization was able to harness the energy from the community. A number of people stepped forward.
We developed a plan. Typically refugees stay in temporary housing for three to four weeks. We had people for much longer, because we had very large families and had to be working constantly to get people into housing. I think the mayors around the region, in Cambridge, Stratford.... We took tours to those cities. We gave the refugees an opportunity to see other parts of the community, not just Kitchener and not just Waterloo, and really tried to open their eyes to possibilities in housing.
We made outreach to the community and had incredible response from the community. Like a lot of other communities, we had responses, as John said, not only in terms of money but of people offering housing. That helped us a great deal.
We worked very hard with the medical officer of health to focus on medical assessments, dental, dental screening. We typically had medical clinics half a day a week. We expanded that to one full day a week and added the dental screening as well. We had health fairs that moved a number of families through intake and provided a wide range of services to the community.
Both school boards were very responsive. Typically school boards like to wait until families are settled in permanent housing before they accept kids into the system. Because of the numbers, school boards came to the hotel, and we were able to process students very early on and get kids into the school system very quickly.
For me the big issue going forward is language training and employment. People are very open to finding employment, and people are now very open to language training. We are trying to get as many people as possible as quickly as possible through English assessment, through the YMCA. We are working very quickly to find spots. Provincial funding is provided through the province for ESL and from the federal government through the LINC program. We're working very hard to get language training for people. That's the next hurdle to accomplish.
We look at all aspects of settlement. People think of settlement agencies dealing only with settlement, but the whole community responded and tried to settle these Syrian refugees.
Right now we have all refugees out of the hotel.