COVID-19 Prevention

January 11, 2021

A message from our Executive Director, Steve Doherty

Jan 11, 2021

It is January of 2021 and looking back at our holiday campaign we are starting the new year off with a success.  We exceeded our target of $40,000 by over $7,000!  This is both a tribute to the amazing generosity of our supporters as well as a big hats off to our Philanthropy and Engagement team for helping to make this happen.  We’ve even exceeded our capacity to accept any further food for our food bank or goods for the time being.  What a great problem to have!  We will keep everyone up to date as to when we can once again accept donations.  We do however continue to accept donations of meals for our residents.

As all of you are unfortunately aware, the COVID-19 cases continue to rise across the province.  We continue to work closely with Toronto Public Health to maintain the highest level of safety possible for our residents and staff team members.  Our intake process, which we created in-house, has been highly praised by TPH for its ingenuity.  Our Director of Operations, Ben Omoregie, worked diligently with his team to create this process.  We have never lost sight of the fact that we are coming to work in someone else’s home.  We have an obligation to do our best to ensure we don’t bring COVID-19 into the shelter.  Our obligation extends to ensuring new residents do the same.

Since the start of the COVID-19 lockdowns last March, YWS managed to find permanent housing for over 40 youth.  This is a record number of placements for nine months.  The dedicated work of our Housing and Aftercare team made this possible.  The Life Skills and Employment team made sure each youth was as prepared for success as possible before they left.  We worked hard to create and foster relationships with landlords and to assist our residents in securing rental assistance from the City of Toronto.  This is another example of how we work together to make good things happen.

I look forward to once again being able to open our doors to volunteers and donors.  We all miss the face to face interactions we used to take for granted.  One thing the lockdowns have taught us is that simple interactions are an incredibly important part of the human experience.  I don’t think any of us will ever take them for granted again.

– Steve Doherty, Executive Director

September 18, 2020

A message from our Executive Director, Steve Doherty

Sept 18, 2020

For all of us, we are learning to adapt to the impacts of COVID-19 on our daily lives.  Our students are learning a great deal about patience as they struggle with the online portals that will serve as classrooms for many of them.  Luckily for them, our staff members are sharing in the frustration of an ever-changing landscape for learning.  Our collective IT skills have certainly been put to the test.

As we move forward, our sanitizing vigilance has remained high.  The pandemic is far from over and our number one priority is the safety of our residents.  This requires both staff and residents to share in the responsibility for keeping our shelter healthy and safe.  The partnership between residents and staff has been the cornerstone of our efforts and it has truly shown how much we can achieve when we look out for one another.  We often hear this as a slogan in the fight against COVID-19, but here at YWS we have brought it to life.  I find it amazing how a crisis has the capacity to bring people together in a lasting and genuine way.

– Steve Doherty, Executive Director

July 10, 2020

A message from our Executive Director, Steve Doherty

July 10, 2020

Throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, we have adapted our practices and protocols to best ensure the safety and well-being of our residents and staff members.  It would now seem we are moving further away from the crisis stage of COVID-19 to the management stage.  The frequency of the reminders of safety measures is far less often.  Our residents and staff members are more educated on COVID-19 and the related procedures.  And we all have many more COVID-19 related words in our daily vocabulary we could never have imagined before.

Although our province is beginning to open up and ease restrictions, YWS continues to be closed to the public for onsite visitations and volunteer initiatives. We look forward to opening our doors to our community once more, and will patiently await for more information and guidance from Toronto Public Health and the Shelter, Support, and Housing Authority in order to do to safely.

There have been a few constants throughout this entire time.  One is the remarkable resilience of our residents.  They have informed us about how to act and what they need.  The dedication of so many of our YWS staff team members has been amazing.  Finally, the generosity of our donors and supporters has humbled us.  At no time did we feel as though we were alone in this.  For that I want to say thank you from the staff team and residents of YWS. 

– Steve Doherty, Executive Director

May 13, 2020

A message from our Executive Director, Steve Doherty

May 13, 2020

The entire country banded together to fight COVID-19 for the past 9 weeks.  Here at YWS we took extraordinary steps to make the shelter as safe as possible for both the youth we serve, and the staff who come to work here every day.  This crisis offered a unique experience of both staff and residents working together for a common goal, the health and safety of everyone here at YWS.  As staff members, we never lost sight of the fact that we work in someone else’s home, and as such, we must do our part to protect the safety of others.

We have worked closely with the Shelter, Support, and Housing Authority (SSHA), Toronto Public Health (TPH), and various other groups to ensure our protocols met and exceeded recognized standards of practice.  More importantly, we worked with our youth to ensure the hygiene practices we all employed were the best possible strategy for prevention.  Some of the steps we have taken include;

• Every person who comes into the residence washes their hands thoroughly upon entry
• All staff members perform a health assessment prior to their shift starting
• Any gloves worn outside of the residence are immediately discarded upon entry
• Routine fever checks for both staff members and residents
• We recently had the entire facility fumigated with a virus killing mist
• Daily sanitizing of surfaces

Since the start of the isolation measures, we have stopped entry to the shelter by volunteers and all non-essential service personnel.  We have moved all non-essential staff members offsite and remote working arrangements have been made where possible.  So many of our staff members have stepped up to the plate for our youth.  We continue to offer counselling sessions with clinicians and outside agency meetings via remote connection.  Our focus has always been on the well-being of the youth we support and this situation is no different. 

I want to thank the many donors who continue to support us and the countless volunteers who have prepared and dropped off meals.  It means so much to all of us knowing we are not alone.  I salute all of the essential workers both here at YWS and across this province who go to work each day.  Without them, life would come to a standstill.  And thank you to all of the Ontarians who have been practicing social isolation and physical distancing, you are all amazing.  We are in this together, and together is how we will emerge from this challenge stronger and more resilient.

– Steve Doherty, Executive Director