OneRoof shelter says cuts to drop-in services will hurt at-risk youth | CBC News
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A Kitchener youth shelter will be permanently rolling back all drop-in services by the end of next week.
One of the big reasons why is cost.
Sandy Dietrich-Bell, the CEO, said it costs OneRoof Youth Services about $500,000 to provide drop-in services every year. Every cent of that comes from community donations.
She said cutting out drop-in services will force at-risk youth onto the streets, which means gathering in public spaces, unsupervised.
“There’s always the chance of being groomed for sex trafficking, adult predators that prey on their vulnerability. Increased drug use because the youth feel disengaged from their own community,” she said.
“[The drop-in program] was a safe place for them to be where no one would move them along. I think with that being removed, there is, in all likelihood, a lot of youth that will start to feel really disengaged again and not know where to go and what to do, and I’m hoping that they don’t get themselves into trouble.”
20 active street gangs in region
A 2022 estimate from WRPS found about 400 youth are involved in 20 active street gangs in the Region of Waterloo.
Compare that to ten years ago, when only one known youth gang was operating in the region.
A report by The Waterloo Regional Gang Prevention Project says boys under the age of 18 are most vulnerable to being recruited into a gang. Some of the boys involved in local gangs are as young as 13 years old.
Services will still be available for youth at OneRoof by appointment. But Dietrich-Bell said that just won’t feel the same because drop-in services were often a first step to guiding troubled youth onto the right path.
“They would come to drop in and then it would be staff encouraging them, you know, do you need to see your housing worker? Do you need to get some laundry done? Now we’re going to shift our focus and have the onus back on them to come to us when they need something and book an appointment for it.”
She said when money is tight, they have to choose to serve the community’s more immediate needs over preventative measures like the drop-in services.
“We have to just start to be a little bit more strategic with where those donation dollars can benefit us most between shelter beds or mental health and addiction services versus a drop in. I mean, it’s no decision anybody ever wants to make, but looking at our priorities, we recognize that if we have to cut somewhere then sadly it has to be the drop-in area.”
The drop-in services will officially be shut down on September 15.
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