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More than food: Connecting our community with wraparound supports
Did you know our Community Food Spaces have more to offer beyond emergency food support?
While we serve nearly 30,000 client visits each month, a vital support for individuals and families facing food insecurity – clients
often have other needs that require additional support to improve their quality of life.
Our Service Navigation Manager, Elis, helps connect clients with wraparound supports by providing information and referrals to resources such as healthcare and clothing.
“For sure clients need food assistance, but beyond that, they need housing, furniture, dental information, information about family doctors and child care,” Elis says. “These are other important services that help people to survive.”
Before taking on this role, Elis worked at our Bathurst-Finch Community Food Space for 10 years, where she and other food space managers provided referrals where they could.
Thanks to a grant from Community Foundations of Canada: Healthy Communities Initiative, North York Harvest was able to fund this vital work on a larger scale through the Virtual Case Management Program. Clients met with Elis in person or virtually to get the support they needed at times that worked for them.
Between September 2023-August 2024, 740 referrals were made. The most-needed referrals supported individuals with:
- Government services
- Clothing Bank
- Dentist services
- Employment support + training
- Primary care
“The support that we got was very valuable and beneficial for us,” says Elena, a North York Harvest client. “Me and my family have a difficult predicament, as I am ailed by health issues and have a young son. Food Bank staff understood the struggles we were facing, supporting and helping us in any way they could … and has helped us with obtaining furniture and clothing.”
For newcomers, they have to adjust to a new country and start a new life, and they have a lot of urgent needs, Elis says. She says a barrier to these resources is not knowing they exist, which even many Canadian-born clients aren’t aware they can access, such as the Fair Pass Transit Discount and the Childcare Subsidy program.
Part of the grant was also used to ensure this vital support could continue after the funding ended by providing training to food space managers so each of them could take on some responsibilities of case management.
However, North York Harvest is still looking for grants to continue to fund and expand this work to support our clients in the next steps toward stability and well-being.
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