Social workers reflect on year's 38 client deaths related to homelessness in Saint John
CBC
Misty Schofield, a Saint John social worker, was sitting in her warm home on Christmas Day when she started to think about her clients.
As co-ordinator of Fresh Start Services' HOPE — Housing Opportunities for People to Excel — Schofield works with people who are either homeless or have received the team's help finding housing.
“I wrote the post because I think Christmas creates a very brutal contrast," Schofield said. "And I was sitting in a warm house surrounded by my kids.
“The dissonance felt relatively unbearable.”
The post said that 36 of Fresh Start’s clients had died in 2025. Since she wrote on Dec. 25, the number has increased to 38.
“The truth is, when you're living unsheltered, there's no way to manage a variety of health conditions." said Melanie Vautour, executive director of Fresh Start. "So people can't manage things like heart disease, can't manage diabetes."
“And over time, chronic exposure to the cold causes damage. And of course the risk of the toxic drug supply and overdose.”
Even once people are housed, the consequences of spending years on the street without medical care often catch up with them.
“Even when someone like the HOPE team gets them housed, they still have those years of unmanaged health conditions and exposure to the elements over time that create more health conditions,” Vautour said.
Schofield says each of the 38 deaths has had a significant emotional impact on her.
“It's heavy, and you carry names," she said. "Not only do you carry those stories, but you carry the knowledge of who is at risk next.
“You attend funerals, and you show up for the next person anyway.”
It’s something social workers know as moral injury: the effect of seeing injustices but having no way to prevent them.
“Over time I feel like that breaks something inside people," Schofield said. "It's not burnout, it's being forced to participate in preventable harm.
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