What is Social Work?

What does Social Work look like at The Alex?

Roughly 50 of the 490 staff at The Alex have social work backgrounds or are currently in a social work role.

These folks can be found across nine of our programs. They’re team leads, case managers, support workers, and program assistants. We even have a few social workers on our administrative team!

Social work truly is the common thread that knits the several Alex programs and services together.

That’s because it’s part of what we call whole health. Being “healthy” is about more than just physical health. What about the impacts of living in poverty? Homelessness? Food insecurity? Social exclusion? Just like health care, these areas of social care are equal contributors to a person living a healthy life.

We sat down with the social work team at The Alex Youth Health Centre (YHC) to talk about what social work is, what it isn’t, and what makes it unique at The Alex.

Youth who come to The Alex are often experiencing many complex challenges, with an intersection between physical health issues, mental health issues, social exclusion, and poverty. For these folks, an integrated approach to well-being is required, which includes medical care, mental health support, and of course, social support.

Social workers at the YHC tailor their support to help the young person address their needs on their terms. They work hard to build positive relationships, because when youth trust those supporting them, they have better outcomes.

Often youth are also connected with our medical team and/or the mental health clinicians.

“Doctors at The Alex love the social work team – they often say they think there should be a social work team at every doctor’s office.”

– Aidan, YHC Social Worker

Doctors don’t have time or training to help patients with social challenges, but those challenges still impact overall health. Take food access for example. Doctors will often get frustrated with the lack of progress when recommending a healthier diet, but if the patient can’t afford to purchase healthy foods, they need help applying for income support, not a prescription.

What is social work not?

Though some social workers become registered psychologists, social workers at the YHC are not therapists. They can and do provide emotional support but will refer to mental health clinicians as needed.

“We’re also not in the business of solving problems for the youth we see. We walk alongside them, help build skills, get them familiar with the system and empower them. We don’t want them accessing us or other supports forever.”

– Kira, YHC Social Worker

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A look back at our COVID reponse

We don’t just mark time in months, days and years, but also in stories, actions, and reflections on where we have been and how we will move forward.

One year into the pandemic is one year of continuous masking, one year of adjusting what social connection means, one year of tireless staff working to ensure no one slips through the cracks.

Responding to shifting guidelines, overcoming technical hurdles, building new programs, maintaining our areas of strength and ensuring our teams are safe, both physically and emotionally – this has been the drumbeat of the last twelve months at The Alex.

Here’s a look back at what we have been able to achieve because of your support.

Joy Bowen-Eyre, CEO

Assisted Self Isolation Site (ASIS)

This new program was born from a need to provide medically-supported accommodations for those experiencing homelessness who needed to self-isolate. The program and facility operates in partnership with Alberta Health Services (AHS), The Calgary Homeless Foundation (CHF) and CUPS. It’s a stellar example of not only system-wide collaboration, but the power of human kindness.

Since we opened in June we have provided warm shelter and hot meals for 1,093* people, supporting them during a very scary and uncertain time.

Social Dispatch

Phone banks, laptop drives and curbside visits: these were the new ways of providing social supports to our community this past year. We brought the social work teams from all our programs together to collaborate and share resources, and provided phone and online support for 4,201 youth, adults and seniors who needed help with basic needs, referrals, and human connection.

Now that we have been able to safely re-open our drop-in spaces and re-engage our mobile buses, the Social Dispatch staff have been redeployed back to their respective programs, but the energy of this collective spirit remains.

539

referrals to benefits / emergency benefits

2833

counselling and support sessions

2555

check-ins with at-risk youth to make sure they’re OK

Community Food Centre

As the pandemic began, The Alex Community Food Centre in Greater Forest Lawn became one of few places where our community could safely gather. Making use of our large parking lot and outdoor garden space, our team prepared thousands of takeout meals and curbside meal kits, and provided affordable produce markets and resource fairs so that Calgarians could safely access healthy food and stay connected.

We also transformed our community program delivery models, shifting to online cooking classes (where ingredients could be picked up and brought home). We hosted Zoom meetings for our Indigenous Knowledge Sharing program and coffee chats with peer advocates, and started an outdoor walking group to keep community members physically active and socially supported.

Business as (un)usual

While ASIS, our Social Dispatch Team and the Community Food Centre were all dealing with new issues that came from the pandemic, our existing programs all stayed open and accessible to our community, addressing the social and environmental factors that can shape people’s lives at any time, including financial housing instability, addiction and mental health, and social and community inclusion.

With your support we were also able to adjust our holiday activities to safely deliver totes of basic needs, celebratory treats and gift cards to over 1,000 members of our community.

Here are updates on how the rest of The Alex has been working to maintain a welcoming presence in people’s lives:

What’s next for The Alex

We have been through a deeply collaborative experience, drawing on compassion, understanding, adaptability and commitment. We have learned that together, there is nothing but possibility. We can strengthen our community. We can tackle tough health and social issues, walking alongside people from crisis to wellness and from challenge to change.

With vaccinations schedules on-going, our entire global community is seeing the first glimpses of a brighter future. Here at The Alex, we are looking forward to in-person social connection, community meals, group programming, yoga & art therapy classes, and hugging. Lots of hugging.

We also are excited to continue to connect with you! Our fall virtual fundraiser Press Play brought us (and Dave Kelly) into hundreds of living rooms to celebrate our youth programs, and we aim to continue to deliver opportunities for online engagement with webinars and other events in the coming months. Stay tuned and thank you for being part of the Alex family!

The post Our Pandemic Year appeared first on The Alex.

Pathways to Housing is one of The Alex’s four housing programs that specializes in securing a home for Calgarians who have slipped through the cracks of the system. Pathways participants have been homeless for a minimum of 6 months due to issues related to substance abuse, psychiatric thought disorders, trauma, or other mental health issues. Guided by the principles of Housing First and harm reduction, Pathways is an evidence-based psychiatric rehabilitation and housing program that offers team-based wrap-around care to help people maintain housing, achieve community integration, and improve self-sufficiency.

So, you might be wondering, once someone is housed and medically stabilized, what are the ways we support them in staying housed and stable?

At it’s most basic, recreation therapy is using activities people enjoy to help them reach their optimal potential, whatever that may be! Imagine you’ve been living on the streets and have been socially excluded in almost every way. You might take for granted the self-care skills you’ve learned such as maintaining a healthy diet, identifying and affording activities that make you happy, and building a support system of community and friendships.

While doing activities with people I’m looking for identifiers of ability, engagement, learning, and growth. For example, let’s say I’m going for a walk around the block with a participant. I’m looking for physical, social, and cognitive skills within that activity. Are they able to follow the rules of the road, listen and respond to social cues from others, finish the walk with minimal pain and anxiety?

I like to say, “Physical therapy will give you the strength to get out of bed. Occupational therapy will give you the tools. Rec therapy will give you the purpose.”

We do one-on-one rec therapy, but we also run groups that are open to all Housing program clients at The Alex. Fitness group is one of the best ones – before COVID we had upwards of 25 people attending every week. Participants would bring their case workers or come on their own and we’d go to Repsol. An amazing community was built through this group and through fitness and it was so beautiful to see.

The whole process is absolutely participant-centered. They are leaders of their own journey, and we work alongside them to meet their healing goals, improve quality of life, and maintain stability. As rec therapists sometimes we’re fully immersed in the activity with participant or we’re there as a support. But ultimately the goal is to give people the confidence and tools to do recreation and leisure activities independently.

We’re more than just playing and having fun. Yes, that’s a huge part of it [laughs] but rec therapy is about so much more. We already all engage in rec therapy daily. Taking that time to reflect on it afterwards and acknowledge the benefits is what makes it unique.

Justine Strilchuk, Rec Therapist
Pathways to Housing

Recreation in itself is therapy. There’s recreation therapy, which is engaging in self care, doing an art project, going hiking, or volunteering. Then there’s recreation AS therapy which is what we do. We are encouraging people to value their rec and leisure time, take pride in it, and notice the benefits it provides overall health and wellbeing.

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The Alex Dental Health Bus visits underserved communities in Calgary, educating kids ages 6-24 on the importance of oral hygiene and providing preventative dental services. Many who use the program are low-income, non-insured or underinsured, and shoulder the greatest burden of dental disease in our community.

We take action because we know that dental health problems often lead to chronic pain, infection, lowered self-esteem, and compromised performance at school. Dental health problems are also linked to other serious health issues.

The effects of COVID-19

Despite the virus, the team has continued to provide this vital service, which is needed now more than ever with many parents out of work, uninsured, and unable to pay out-of-pocket for dental care for their kids.

While there are negatives in the pandemic reality we’re facing, one of the “COVID wins” the Dental Health team has identified has been the shift to a virtual platform for education presentations. Whereas pre-pandemic, our dental hygienist would physically visit classrooms in Calgary’s highest needs schools, she can now virtually “visit” multiple classrooms in one morning. This means she’s able to educate more kids than ever on how often to visit a dentist, what a cavity is and how it’s formed, good habits for brushing and flossing, and healthy food and drink choices.

The Dental Health Bus also started temporarily serving Grade 1 students this year at elementary schools. This age group is normally treated by Alberta Health Services public health hygienists, but they were redeployed to COVID-19 swabbing sites, and were unable to visit schools.

Despite rigorous new protocols, the Dental Health Bus managed to serve the same number of students per day at schools as it did pre-pandemic. Service demand persisted, permission slip response rates were high, and families were eager to receive support. This need is expected to persist and grow in the wake and recovery period of the pandemic.

Dental Health Bus School Program Statistics Summary

September 2020 – June 2021

The long-term strategy for improving dental health

The goal of The Alex Dental Health Bus is not just to educate and provide preventative care, but to also act as a bridge to help families find dental “homes” in their community. 

So, behind the scenes, the team has been building an innovative new referral system with dental offices across Calgary called the Dental Access Network (DAN). The highly collaborative system aims to ensure kids with the most urgent needs are taken care of before needing more expensive emergency care.

The DAN aims to ensure no Calgarians fall through the cracks of the dental system, but rather they can access immediate care and be given help finding a dental home for regular check-ups and cleanings.

“The goal isn’t to have people rely on us – we are here to educate, prevent and recognize dental problems in the short term, and help build relationships between dentists and the community in the long term” says Dental Health Program Lead, Shannon Hawryluk.

The fluoride debate

Fluoride was removed from Calgary’s water in 2011. This year City Council announced a plebicite will take place during the municipal election on October 18th inviting Calgarians to vote yes or no to putting fluoride back in the water.

The conversation around water fluoridation may have resurfaced in Calgary, but it’s been part of our daily work on the Dental Health Bus since the program started in 2013. Our staff see the effects of deficient public dental health measures on kids every day.

Our data continues to tell a troubling story – that 45% of the kids who come on the bus have cavities – and that’s not existing fillings, but ongoing active decay. Additionally, 34% of kids that have active decay are considered urgent, which we define as having pain or an infection.

The Alex believes that fluoridation is an equitable way to ensure every Calgarian has access to a base level of preventative dental health care. However, we know that this does not replace the importance of affordable access to dental care for everyone. Universal Dental Benefits would truly have the greatest impact on public health.

“If you think of it like a pie chart, fluoride [in the water] is just a piece of the pie. Education is a piece, nutrition is a piece, topical fluoride that you get at the dentist is a piece, and of course access to dental care. We are in support of fluoride, yes, but we’re also in support of universal dental care for all. Without either one, we’re out here on the ground doing the best work we can in the meantime,” Says Hawryluk

Learn More

History of Fluoride in Calgary

Community Water Fluoridation: A Report for City Council (University of Calgary)

Alberta Dental Association & College

Alberta Health Services: Water Fluoridation

Alberta Health Services: What does science say?

The Canadian Association of Public Health Dentistry position statement

Community water fluoridation: FAQs

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The Alex’s Rapid Access Addictions Medicine (RAAM) clinic opened in February and has never been more vital for some than in the past year, when we’ve all faced the new – and often daunting – challenges of a pandemic.

RAAM services help fill gaps in the addictions treatment system by providing immediate access to evidence-based addiction care. Having RAAM as part of our Community Health Centre allows for fast, safe, effective treatment of addiction in a way that sets the individual up for success by providing medication-assisted recovery as well as psychosocial supports. The program is short-term, focusing on the early recovery period. People typically access the program for between three and six months before returning to their family doctor with a plan for ongoing support and treatment.

The RAAM clinic came to be thanks to Dr. Hasan Sheikh of the RAAM Clinic at Toronto Western Hospital. He joined the Calgary Mayor’s Office as part of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative last summer, when he conducted a comprehensive review of our addictions services in Calgary. Dr. Sheikh identified the opportunity for RAAM to complement our services.

So naturally when Dr. Sheikh shared his insights with our CEO, Joy Bowen-Eyre, she became excited about the potential benefits of the model. Subsequent funding from Alberta Health Services and the federal government allowed us to move quickly from the idea to reality.

“The journey of building this clinic and making a difference in people’s life has been so rewarding. Bringing hope and (often life-saving) treatment to someone during a time of despair has been a gift and a privilege.”

Jen Eyford, Associate Director of Mental Health and Addictions

We know that when folks make the decision to address their addiction and mental health issues they need unbiased, stigma-free support and they need it immediately.  The RAAM clinic at The Alex has filled a much-needed gap in the services we currently offer our community.  I am incredibly proud of the RAAM team,” Joy reflects.

The clinic has been busy and well-attended despite COVID-19. In fact, many people have told us the pandemic has had a negative impact on their substance use. Sadly, provincial statistics bear that out, as more than twice the amount of Albertans have died of opioid overdoses in the second quarter of 2020 than in the first, and deaths increased by 28% in the first six months over the previous year.*

The clinic staff includes two addictions counselors, a nurse, a medical office assistant, a peer support worker, a medical lead and a mix of addiction medicine specialists, primary care providers and nurse practitioners.

Jen Eyford, Associate Director of Mental Health and Addictions, and RAAM lead considers how RAAM has made a difference in the work The Alex does in response to addiction. “The journey of building this clinic and making a difference in people’s life has been so rewarding. Bringing hope and (often life-saving) treatment to someone during a time of despair has been a gift and a privilege.” 

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Like everyone, we adapted. In the earliest weeks of the crisis, we cast our sights across the broader Alex community. First, we focused on our most highly vulnerable community members, those with complex medical, mental health and addiction supports. Our kitchen staff began preparing and delivering over 4,500 hot meals to ensure they stayed comfortably in their homes.

At the same time, we collaborated with other members of The Alex team, including social workers, resource specialists, and justice navigators, to create a Social Dispatch hub, providing a safe way for people to connect with staff, receive resources, get connected to basic needs. Several rooms at our Community Health Centre were filled with phone banks, and we spread the word that The Alex was open for business as (un)usual.

As we move away from emergency response and into the longer-term, the CFC kitchen has pivoted yet again to ensure we are prepared to respond to increased requests for support. With the help from our funders and supporters, we are now able to offer financial supports for food, shopping services, grocery kits, and meal kits.

Now our kitchen is busy making delicious, healthy frozen individual meals, ready to be simply re-heated, and safely delivered to those who are unable to prepare food at home. Meal hampers are delivered to people able to cook independently with some support, and grocery cards are given to community members who can go to shopping and cook what works best for their families.

As the weather warms, we are also looking towards ways we can use our large outdoor garden and gathering space to safely bring people together, recapturing the spirit of community. Our first affordable produce market kicked off in early May, as we are excited to continue to grow these activities, balancing the priority of physical safety, with the importance of neighbourhood connection.

Our seedlings are ready to be planted in our garden, and as we look to the future, all we know is that no matter the circumstances, the veggies in our garden will continue to grow, we will continue to cook, and everyone will share in the spirit of The Alex Community Food Centre.

The post Growing, Cooking, and Sharing during COVID-19 appeared first on The Alex.

The Assisted Self-Isolation Site (ASIS) is a collaboration between The Alex, Calgary Homeless Foundation, HomeSpace, and CUPS. The rooms are for those who have tested positive, are waiting for test results, have symptoms or have come into contact with a known case and don’t have a home where they can properly isolate. The staff provide not only medical support, but also mental health and addiction resources.

Through tremendous efforts of the frontline teams, ASIS opened within one week of funding support from the Government of Alberta, and we have already seen an incredible collaboration across the city, as shelters and hospitals refer in to the program.

National and local news coverage:

• CBC
• Globe and Mail
• LiveWire
• Calgary Herald
• Calgary Sun
• National Post

A recent client at the ASIS was unable to be with his family who live in Claresholm. He thanked our staff for being supportive, accommodating and filling the role his family would’ve for him. He was proud that he has been clean for the duration of being at ASIS and that this has been exactly what he needed at this time.

Nick, Charge Nurse, ASIS

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