REGINA - Regina is the home of the latest Integrated Youth Services location to open in Saskatchewan.
The ribbon has been cut for HOMEBASE Integrated Youth Services in Regina. It is now open to young people, ages 12 to 25, at 2817 12th Ave. in the new building that houses the YWCA‘a Kikaskihtânaw Centre for Women and Families.
The YWCA Regina will be operating the Regina location, while the John Howard Society is leading the implementation of this and other hubs in the province with the financial support of the provincial government. The province is contributing $3.4 million in total.
“The organization of the groups came together rather strongly about a year ago,” said Social Services Minister Lori Carr. “So we’re really excited to work with the YWCA and the John Howard Society on opening these HOMEBASE locations across the province.”
Officials including Minister Carr as well as those from the John Howard Society and the YWCA Regina were on hand to cut the ribbon to officially open the facility Friday.
This is one of four such hubs being set up across the province. The first two have already opened in Humboldt and Moose Jaw, and another is coming soon to Sturgeon Lake.
The idea behind these hubs, according to the province, is to “connect youth with the supports and services they are looking for all in one location."
Pamela Reimer, Director of Integrated Youth Services with the John Howard Society of Saskatchewan, said her organization was selected as the backbone organization for HOMEBASE to help coordinate the different communities.
“We were selected as the bigger province or provincial voice to kind of help navigate those pieces to ensure that there was a good provincial outline and model that allowed our different communities to be able to best meet the needs of the different youth that they were going to end up working with.”
Reimer said they identified six core services that align with a variety of different integrated youth service initiatives across the country. According to the province’s news release, the hub will provide mental health and addiction supports, physical health services, education, employment and training supports, peer supports, cultural and traditional services, and social and community supports.
HOMEBASE Regina was designed with input from youth, with youth collectives were very much involved in the planning for how it would look.
Kaplan Dudar-Saunders was one of the youth involved in that whole process.
“I had a lot of ideas and I didn't say most of them because I was nervous,” he said to reporters. “But we talked about the environment and we also talked about how to make it feel safer and how to have stuff that will make it safe for kids and make them feel welcome.”
Jacob Lane was also part of the youth group during that process. He is excited to see HOMEBASE open and believes it will make a difference in the community.
“It's definitely a big help,” said Lane, pointing in particular to mental health and addictions issues.
“Within the area I'm in, North Central, a third of the population at Scott (Collegiate) vapes or smokes. So it's definitely a big thing to have something like this that can help those youth.”
The belief is this will fill a void in providing supports for young people.
“Yeah, I noticed, not just with myself, but with others, that when it comes to mental health specifically, there's a huge gap,” said Amy-Louise Roberts, youth advisor. “Like I said, the wait lists are so long, and there's so much stigma. And so youth feel like they can't talk about these issues with their parents, their caregivers, their peers, even professionals. And I believe that HOMEBASE will kind of eliminate that a little bit.“
