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Former Target building in Fergus to be first of a number of Youth Wellness Hubs in Wellington County and Guelph

Pending funding, the Youth Wellness Hub will open by the end of the year
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Plans for a series of Youth Wellness Hubs in Guelph and Wellington County are moving ahead, with the first site expected to open in Fergus by the end of the year.

Rotary Club of Guelph was the catalyst that began the planning for the Guelph-Wellington Integrated Youth Services project, which will offer services in person and online for youth ages 12 to 26. 

After a number of consultations with over 55 community partners, the Youth Wellness Hubs project has grown past being just a Rotary project, said Cyndy Forsyth, Rotarian and co-chair of the steering committee for the youth wellness hubs initiative.

“We got together, along with a number of key organizations,,” said Forsyth. 

After a workshop hosted in November at the Guelph Y attracted over 30 local organizations, Forsyth said the overwhelming response was to get the project rolling as quickly as possible.

In January, the project made Canadian Mental Health Association Waterloo Wellington (CMHA WW) its primary partner and named the Guelph Community Foundation as its primary funding partner.

“We do not want to build a new charity with a new bureaucracy. We don’t need that,” said Forsyth. “These hubs are meant to be centralized and have services for youth that are centralized that are from soup to nuts — resume writing, leadership skills and all the way up to mild or moderate mental health.”

The next immediate step is for the Youth Wellness Hubs to find a project manager. Forsyth has been temporarily filling that role up until now, but the project requires someone in that role permanently as it continues to move full steam ahead.

“I have a full time job and this is becoming a full time job and more,” said Forsyth.

The project is moving ahead faster than many, likely because of Rotary’s early involvement, said Helen Fishburn, executive director of CMHA WW.

“They are very much the catalyst,” said Fishburn. 

Other partners include the Guelph Y and Guelph Community Foundation.

Pending funding, the first Youth Wellness Hub location is slated for about 8,000 square feet of the former Target building in Fergus.

“The interesting thing about this project is that it is incredibly inclusive for youth. Everything they need in one spot. It isn’t just mental health and addictions and crisis,” said Fishburn. ““It’s any youth who needs anything. You need help finding a job, creating a resume, help with housing, having struggles with education.”

“The beauty of this model is we have taken all of those fragments and knitted them together into a welcoming inclusive space, that the youth are actually going to design themselves, that says come on in, whatever your needs are — we’re here,” said Fishburn.

Forsyth said a number of sites could pop up across the County of Wellington and within Guelph. The model for the project is to allow service providers to move staff into the hubs rent free.

“Agencies are struggling to provide services. We really believe the more integrated we are, the more capacity we can build,” said Forsyth. “It’s about them delivering their services at a different location, not about them incurring additional costs.”

Part of the project was also looking at all the services available for youth in Guelph and Wellington County and figuring out how they could fit into the hub model.

“There’s a lot of duplication (of services),” said Forsyth. “Everybody’s heart is in the right spot, but there is no centralized service for youth.”

There are currently about 35 Youth Wellness Hubs in operation across Canada, with about 10 of those in Ontario, said Forsyth. All of the sites are networked together and share knowledge, she said.

Because they are built to suit the needs of the community and with input from the local youth, no two sites look the same, said Forsyth.

The local hubs will be built to reach out to rural youth in person and online and also connect to youth on the U of G campus.

“If we can reach the rural youth and the urban youth, we know there have similar problems, but we know they approach them differently,” said Forsyth.


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Kenneth Armstrong

About the Author: Kenneth Armstrong

Kenneth Armstrong is a news reporter and photojournalist who regularly covers municipal government, business and politics and photographs events, sports and features.
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