New street outreach, sobering centre in Yellowknife provide safe space for youth
CBC
A new outreach program and sobering space for youth launched in Yellowknife recently, and already has the people who run it looking for more ways to support young people in the city.
The program is run by Home Base, an organization that supports youth, and started running on Oct. 10, with a "soft launch."
"It's been pretty steady, but we've had some really good support," April Green, Home Base's associate director of programs and operations, said.
The program uses a vehicle that was donated from Avid Insurance, Peace Hills and Burgundy Diamond Mines, and will use it to pick up young people from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. each night and drop them off where they need to go.
The sobering centre, which has four beds, is staffed for 20 hours a day. The only time it isn't staffed is from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., Green said.
Tammy Roberts, Home Base's executive director, said before these services launched, there was "no place for youth to go" when they need help, other than the emergency room or to RCMP cells.
"We saw that people were in a place where they didn't know how to help these youth, or who to reach out to. Roberts said. "Since we returned from the [city] evacuation last fall, we saw more youth in public intoxicated or/and under the influence of drugs."
Green said the new program has so far been well-received by the youth who use it.
"I think they feel like it's a safe program for them and they feel that they can trust the program," she said.
Green said the biggest challenge right now is that youth are sometimes intoxicated by 5 p.m. or 6 p.m., but the vehicle only starts operating at 8 p.m.
Extending the hours would require more funding, she said. Right now, the program is funded through the N.W.T.'s Department of Health and Social Services.
That funding is slated to last until the end of March.
"We're looking at other sources of funding to go beyond then, and also to expand so we can have the outreach vehicle out on the street more than just eight hours a day," Green said.
Roberts said they decided that staffing the sobering site for a longer period was more important, because ultimately youth need a place to go.
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