Help for troubled teens is on the way at Nanaimo’s only youth safe house, thanks to a $70,000 city grant.
Nanaimo city council opted to spend this year’s casino revenue to increase the number of beds and support available at Tillicum Lelum Aboriginal Friendship Centre’s emergency youth shelter.
The eight-bed facility opened in 2012 on Tenth Street to cater to high demand from central Island communities, but four beds have sat empty because of a lack of funding and staff.
Without adequate staffing, the organization has also been challenged to address addicted youths who arrive at the facility while detoxing.
According to Claudio Aguilera, a Tillicum Lelum manager, the organization helped 183 clients in its 2013-14 year, but since last spring it has had to turn away, each month, an average of 30 youths seeking temporary refuge. The city’s one-time, $70,000 grant will go toward hiring the staff to make the full eight beds available, helping address detoxing youth and creating a new day program at the shelter.
Tillicum Lelum has also applied to Island Health for funding for more beds, with an aim to bolster staffing.
“It’s crucial to have support for youth because that’s when they get most entrenched in the street, prostitution, drugs … we have a window there,” Aguilera said.
“We can provide them with support or direct them to where the support is,” Aguilera said. “If we say no, we don’t know where they go.”
The city dollars stem from the social development grant program which distributes casino revenue toward different initiatives.
This year, the focus for grants is on mental health.
Nanaimo city council was unanimous in directing dollars toward Tillicum Lelum’s safe house with Coun. Gord Fuller calling the funding of four beds “huge,” and Coun. Wendy Pratt outlining the potential for dollars to be used to leverage other available funding.
Grace Elliott-Nielsen, executive director of Tillicum Lelum, said she’s happy with the grant approval and the money will be put to good use.
