Tag Archive: health care

  1. Connecting our community with wraparound supports

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    More than food: Connecting our community with wraparound supports

    One person wearing a mask and an apron sits and smiles next to a person wearing a backpack and sunglasses. There is text on the bottom that reads Meet Elis! North York Harvest's Service Navigation Manager

    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

    An image of an old man smiling and giving the thumbs up from a dentist chair. In the quote text, he expresses gratitude for North York Harvest helping him get access to dental care.

     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

    A graph indicating top referrals by category such as furniture and dental care services.

    “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.

  2. Approach to COVID-19 Vaccination

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    North York Harvest Food Bank’s approach to the COVID-19 pandemic is guided by our organizational responsibilities to workplace health and safety and our commitment to human rights.  Just as we believe that all community members have a right to food, we believe that access to health care resources should be provided free from discrimination.  Sadly, our collective experience with COVID-19 demonstrates that this is not the case.  Community consultations conducted by Toronto Public Health “stated that COVID-19 has laid bare and exacerbated long-standing systemic inequities related to poverty, racism and other forms of discrimination” and that “inequitable access to the social determinants of health has provided favourable conditions for COVID-19 to spread in populations already marginalized by existing inequities, particularly Indigenous, Black, racialized and low-income communities”.[1]  To state it bluntly, our community members are at disproportionate risk of contracting COVID-19 but not as likely to be able to access appropriate protections.[2]

    As an organization, we have spared no expense to make our workplaces and food spaces safe, to protect the health of our workers and to maximize access to emergency food assistance in our community.   We have committed to use guidance from public health experts as a minimum operating standard for all of our work.  This approach extends to vaccines.  While vaccinations provide individual protections from COVID-19, the primary goal of a vaccination campaign is to establish “herd immunity” whereby the majority of the population is immunized and COVID-19 can no longer spread.[3]  Our community will not be safe until this threshold is met.  As a result, North York Harvest Food Bank joins with Toronto Public Health to strongly encourage all Torontonians to get vaccinated if they are eligible to do so.   While we acknowledge that vaccination is an individual choice and that people may have valid reasons for not receiving a vaccination, we strongly believe that choosing to be vaccinated is an important way that all eligible Torontonians can support our work and our community. 

    North York Harvest Food Bank will facilitate COVID-19 vaccinations in any way that we can.  This includes using our food spaces to provide information and opportunities for vaccinations to our community members. 

    The availability of safe and effective vaccines provides us with a powerful tool to combat COVID-19.  I thank you for your commitment as we lend our support to local vaccination campaigns.

    Sincerely,

    Ryan Noble

    Executive Director

     

    Additional Information on COVID-19 Vaccinations

    Vaccine fact sheets from the government of Ontario

    Information on the rollout of vaccines from Toronto Public Health

  3. The Cost of Poverty

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    Poverty affects more than just the thousands of Canadians struggling with it every day. In fact, poverty costs the Canadian Taxpayers over $84 Billion Dollars EVERY YEAR.  Our taxes are used to cover the different areas, many of which are affected and increased by poverty – education, lack of employment and health care being the most prevalent.

    Did you know that taxes do not pay for any food support provided by our 47 member agencies? We rely on the generous donations of people like you to ensure we can help our neighbours in need.  But NYH is not just a food bank.  Together we are also working to provide training, referrals, child care food delivery and job support.  Stay tuned for our new Logistics Training Program which will utilise our warehouse to train people and help them access employment opportunities while ensuring food is delivered to our agencies.

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    Help us make an impact in our community.  Get involved with North York Harvest today!