Thank you for your question, Ms. Bérubé.
Indeed, it has been a great challenge to develop front-line services while maintaining essential healthcare services, as well as social and psychosocial services, and providing support to the homeless and vulnerable women. However, since the friendship centres are organizations that have developed organizational agility and play a leadership role in our communities, fortunately we have been able to reorganize the services, while also providing services remotely using technology.
We have, however, maintained some direct services to the community, including home visits and services from a day centre for the homeless, which we had to relocate because of the physical distancing order and the health guidelines required because of the pandemic. Fortunately, we were able to count on the municipality to support us with these measures. It is also a matter of working in partnership with public health and our other partners to ensure that we provide adequate responses.
Native friendship centres, particularly the one in Val-d'Or, have been on the front lines because we have a culturally relevant approach. We connect with people. So we have had to reorganize all these services to ensure effective front-line services. Thanks to the relationship of trust we have with people, they have been able to use technology. According to the statistics, we do over 100 support sessions per week in our communities, where we are in contact with just over 100 families when we deliver food. This helps us to keep the contacts.
However, the challenges do remain, that is for sure.