Contrary to what many feared, no homeless person died of cold this winter in Quebec. Heat stops, overflow sites for shelters, last minute solutions had to be deployed everywhere to avoid the worst. First assessment of solutions that look like bandages. Second text in our series.
Created in a hurry to prevent homeless people from dying of cold, heat stops lacked personnel to operate. They had to resort to less qualified and sometimes more vulnerable staff… who stayed for less time.
The Nocturnal Chimney in the Saint-Roch district, in Quebec, saw its workers resign one after the other this winter. Of the seven employees recruited at the start of the season, there are only two left, recently confided to the Duty Olivier Martin, director of family and community support at the YMCA and responsible for the project. “Want, don’t want, it’s a job which is not easy”, he summed up in an interview.
“With the labor shortage, we haven’t necessarily been able to hire experienced workers. There was turnover. There are people who did not expect it to be that… It was rough at first. »
Unlike many resources, heat stops welcome everyone, including people who are intoxicated or intoxicated. In the midst of a shortage, recruiting people to work at night anywhere is already squaring the circle. Imagine the challenge for these stops.
But the Nocturnal Chimney was still able to stay open and is running at the moment thanks to the help of a security guard and four “interveners”. The word is in quotation marks because they are “not necessarily trained in homelessness,” said Martin, who speaks of intervention students and job seekers.
In homelessness resources, the lack of personnel is “problem number 1”, according to Boromir Vallée Dore, director general of the Réseau solidaire itinérance du Québec (RSIQ). The issue is widespread, but it turned out to be even more critical in the heat stops due to the schedules and the seasonal nature of the work. “We ask them to welcome the unwelcome, all those who do not fittent nowhere. Obviously, you still have to be seasoned, it takes expertise and experience to get there. »
“Negative spiral”
In Val-d’Or, the resources no longer even try to recruit qualified people, explains Stéphane Grenier, president of the La Piaule shelter and manager of an overflow center set up in the basement of the church for two years. . “I only hire people with big hearts and no training,” he says. People who finish university in the region, they all work for CISSAT [le Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux de l’Abitibi-Témiscamingue]. »
The people he has recruited are “doing well,” he continues. “They have experience of life, of the street. They don’t take things “personal”. It’s world tough. But there is “still a certain staff turnover,” he admits.
Sherbrooke also tested the heat break formula this winter. From one day to another, we welcomed between 5 and 15 people per evening, according to the coordinator of the Table itinérance Sherbrooke (TIS), Gabriel Pallotta. For fear of cannibalizing valuable personnel in other resources, Mr. Pallotta did not even try to recruit speakers. “We knew it was impossible to find any with the schedules we had. So we immediately went to security agencies. A counselor and a helping pair joined the team, but late in the season. In the end, “it still went well”, according to him, “but in an ideal world, we would have an agent and a worker on site. »
In the Outaouais, the situation has sometimes been chaotic. In early December, the coordinator of the Regional Collective for the Fight against Homelessness in the Outaouais (CRIO), Nick Paré, sounded the alarm.
“We have people who are less trained than at a certain time because there is a shortage. But in addition, it is difficult to train them well. They leave more quickly, the conditions are more difficult. It’s like a negative spiral that makes conditions increasingly difficult for everyone. »
This had negative impacts on the services offered, he observes with hindsight. “People don’t have experience or technical training. […] This results in stakeholders less capable of de-escalating crises. So they call the police, put people in limited access more quickly because they feel in danger. »
But the staff also suffers. The condition of homeless people is deteriorating “more quickly than before”, according to him. “It makes living environments, accommodations and heat stops much more difficult for people, but at the same time for community workers,” he continues.
Staff at risk too
Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, 79.5% of workers working with the homeless have seen their mental health deteriorate, according to research published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry in 2022.
These statistics are similar to those observed among health personnel, notes its author, Nick Kerman, a researcher at the Campbell Institute of Mental Health Research in Ottawa. The difference is that people who work with the homeless “have received less attention,” he says.
The researcher found no differences between the condition of workers at emergency sites and those at regular shelters. The determining factor, he says, is the workers’ proximity to the people in distress and the frequency of such contact.
“The workers interviewed were exposed to crises, overdoses, suicides and violence among people who attend the services, ”he notes in another publication on the same subject. However, “this group of workers does not always have access to the training required to react well”. He is therefore more at risk of suffering from distress, he concludes.
We suspect it: many draw the conclusion that it is necessary to better train and better pay its people.
“Our members tell us in many places that the funds they have to ride do not allow them to get the resources they need,” argues Boromir Vallée Dore, of the RSIQ.
Working conditions vary from place to place, but some homelessness organizations have already raised wages. At La Piaule in Val-d’Or, staff once paid around minimum wage now earn more than $20 an hour, says Stéphane Grenier. A necessity in a region where the mining industry is driving up pay. No choice, he said. “At home, even McDonald’s offers $17 an hour. »
With Sebastien Tanguay