"Crows have so much freedom. They can do what they want, go where they want. They also have so much wisdom. I want to be like the crow and to follow the wisdom of the crow as I go forward"
“I want a family and stability, a partner and a child. In this image my partner and I are the trees that are holding up the house that our child will live in. Of course there is a dog, that’s what our child is riding- what household is complete without a dog? All this will be possible because of the resources that I have- my determination and my community”
"I want be like water and flow in my life, I will have the flexibility to overcome any situation"
"My dream is to become a nurse. I know I have the internal resource to get there in terms of drive, energy friends and family but I need to get the grades. I would tell everyone at my school that they need to take a ‘chill pill’"
"I am going to work really hard in school and enter writingcontestsin summer through the libraries. I am still working on story ideas, don’t know, I want more life experiences that I can write about.I have lots of things I want to say, and I want to say them through stories, songs and poetries."
Ferzana Chaze and Bethany Osborne, Faculty at Sheridan College’s
Faculty of Applied Health and Community Studies partnered with Halton
Granters’ Roundtable to conduct this Needs Assessment of the Resources available for Youth at Risk in the Halton Region.
The research was
supported financially by Halton Region’s Social and Community Services, and
was made possible through Oakville Community Foundation’s connections and
resources, as well as other connections made through members of the Halton
Granters’ Roundtable.
Additional funding for the research was provided through a grant provided through Sheridan College and through the generous support of the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development.
The goal of the research was to conduct a Needs Assessment in relation to services for in/at-risk groups of youth between the ages of 16-24 years of age within the Halton region:
1. To identify the existing services available to meet the needs of the youth
2. To identify the gaps/duplication within services in order to suggest future fundable solutions
We began by defining the population of youth that fell into the category of in or at risk.
Our community stakeholders supported the formation of the following list:
To inform our understanding of issues facing youth in Halton region, in the province and across Canada, we accessed the different reports that have been written about youth in Halton region and also accessed literature and reports that are Ontario and Canada specific throughout this report.
Halton region is a vast area with many different needs specific to each of its regions. It was a monumental task to do a Needs Assessment for Youth in/At Risk in the Halton Region. We need to acknowledge some of the limitations of this research study up front: we had a limited scope and we had limited time. As new researchers and practitioners to Halton region, we also needed to rely on our community partners to direct us to the right people to talk to and to support us in making connections. Increasingly, as we talked to program administrators and frontline workers across the region, we realized how many service providers we ‘wished’ we could talk to. We also want to acknowledge the great work that we have seen going on across the region, the different projects that we have encountered, the people that we have met, and the initiatives that we have learned about.
Research Process
