Newmarket's Cedar Centre is teaming up with several children's welfare agencies to create a central location where abused children and their non-abusive family members can access the services they need all under one roof — from counselling to access to police.
The Child and Youth Advocacy Centre will be the first of its kind in York Region and has been in the works for nearly a decade. But now the Cedar Centre has the partners and the funding needed to make it happen.
"We are taking the onus off (children and their caregivers) to navigate a system no one should have to be familiar with and saying 'all you need to do is come through the door, and we will take care of you," said Alison Peck, executive director of the Cedar Centre.
The Cedar Centre is working with York Regional Police, York Region Children's Aid Society, Dnaagdawenmag Binnoojiiyag Child & Family Services and Jewish Family and Child Service on the project. They are adopting the advocacy centre service model that emerged in the United States and has been slowly spreading into Canada for about 20 years. The Boost Child & Youth Advocacy Centre in Toronto is an example of this.
"The model is one that wraps all the services that are involved with youth around the child and non-offending family members so that child has a greater chance for good outcomes," said Peck.
"In the U.S., it was more of a justice-focused model, so it was focused very heavily on ... good outcomes in court, and preparing parents and child for court. Our model will include elements of that, but it will also include a very strong children and youth mental health component, which is fairly unique in Canada."
The idea is to have all of those services under one roof. That way, children and families in need will be able to go to one place in York Region to get everything the participating organizations have to offer, instead of having to contact several different offices.
"Right now, children and their supportive caregivers have to travel to different points across the region to piece together all the things that need to be there for an investigation and possibly going to court. This model turns that on its head. We want them to be able to come to one place," said Peck.
Having everything under one roof also reduces the need for the children to relive their trauma by telling different organizations what happened to them over and over.
The centre is officially a Cedar Centre project and it will be the hosting organization. But in addition to getting the other agencies to agree to set up shop in the new centre, they have also hammered out a coordination system to make sure they work together effectively.
Getting such a place set up in York Region has been several years in the making, and there is a lot of work to do before a centre will be able to open its doors.
Peck began talking about the idea for a centre years ago at meetings of the Child Abuse Systems Team, which helps maintain and oversee the different child abuse services in the region. A few years later, they spent a week at the Zebra Centre in Edmonton to see how it worked and how it affected outcomes.
Zebra's CEO encouraged them to begin writing grant applications to start a York Region centre. The Cedar Centre hired a project lead and began the work on a feasibility study.
"The unanimous reaction at the end of the study was 'yes, move forward,'" she said.
The Cedar Centre has now received a three-year grant from the federal government and a one-year, $52,000 Ontario Trillium Foundation grant to pay for the development work on the centre. Peck thanked both organizations for their support.
“This $52,500 investment by the Ontario Trillium Foundation has allowed us to establish important groundwork needed to bring this initiative to life," she said.
Obtaining a location for the new centre will be a critical part of the process and not an easy or inexpensive one.
Peck said they will need to find a location that is easy to get to and will be capable of housing all of the services involved. Some services, notably the police, have special building requirements that will have to be met.
While they have grants to do development work, Peck said there will need to be a capital raising campaign to pay for that significant expense.
"There will be a campaign launch, I believe, sometime this coming year," said Peck.
"If someone comes out of the woodwork who has a building they are willing to offer, it might be that simple. But we are not sure if we will be building our own, or purchasing and renovating."
