In May, Ainsley Chapman, Executive Director, was nominated for a Change Leader award, through The Change Leadership, an organization designed to support leaders, organizations and communities to adapt and respond, in the midst of rapid change and disruption. In this special interview, Ainsley shared some thoughts on change and what she learned during the pandemic.
How has EHM been changing?
I wouldn’t say EHM has been changing as much as I would say we have adapted to the change that is happening around us. EHM has been around since 1913 – it has supported the community through two World Wars, The Great Depression, multiple recessions, and some pretty significant social changes over the last century. Our core mission has never changed – we are a place of hope and support to people experiencing poverty. But the services that we offer – those have looked very different over the years. That is why EHM is here today – because every leader before me, and every Board of Directors, took the time to look at how the community is changing, and found a way to adapt and make sure services meet new community needs.
What changes are happening in the community?
In the 90s, around the time that the Portland Place and Adelaide St Building were being planned and built, this neighbourhood was filled with parking lots and affordable rooming houses. The Drop In Centre was providing meals, but it was operating more like a living room and community space, rather than a modern homeless shelter. By the time I started at EHM in 2015, the neighbourhood was being transformed into luxury condos – and all of that affordable housing is now gone. We started to see homelessness rates skyrocket, but what was more concerning, is that guests coming to the Drop In Centre were experiencing far more serious mental health challenges than anyone in the community had seen before. The people moving into the residences from shelters were coming with much higher mental health and medical needs than we had traditionally seen. Hospitals have started releasing people too early and without appropriate care in their homes. Waitlists for long term care and housing that includes nursing care are years too long. Supporting tenants and guests in the Drop In Centre was becoming harder every year.
How has EHM been adapting?
As an agency, we had to take a step back and understand what was happening, and ask ourselves – what is needed by clients now, and how can we keep offering services safely, in an environment where things are becoming more dangerous? We did things like, increase the ratio of staff to clients, and increased the amount of training and supervision that staff receive. We also looked at what hospitals, police, and other community supports were asking of us – and set firm boundaries and started saying no to requets that were too high risk and should be delivered by health care workers. So EHM’s housing support team does a lot of advocacy to keep tenants in hospital longer. We’ve been working to get tenants on waitlists for long-term care, and helping them to qualify for PSWs and other supportive care in their home.
What impact did COVID have on EHM?
The short answer – COVID made all of the problems we were seeing before the pandemic, worse. Much worse. We only paused services for ten days in March 2020, and spent the pandemic filling gaps left by lockdowns and community services that closed due to volunteer stoppages and illness. Homeless clients across the city lost access to meal programs, and spaces that provide washrooms, showers, and laundry. More importantly, many tenants lost their in-home supports like PSWs and food delivery services, and very few mental health providers were maintaining regular contact with their clients. We had to adapt and change constantly to meet new needs, to support more people, all while adhering to public health regulations that sometimes changed multiple times in a month. Things have settled down with the pandemic, but the need for food continues to increase every single month and we are still figuring out how to keep up. We are also facing a mental health crisis that will last at least another two or three years.
And of course, there’s the homelessness crisis – EHM is trying to find ways to create new or access existing housing. We have some incredible individuals and families who don’t need the intensive supports in our downtown buildings anymore, but we don’t have anywhere they can afford in Toronto. If we could get more housing around the city, we could reserve EHM’s downtown residences to house people currently staying in the shelter system who need a lot of support, and move the more independent families and seniors to other quieter, residential communities.
What helped EHM adapt to these changes?
First and foremost – the financial support from donors during the pandemic helped us to make decisions quickly, to buy the PPE, the plexiglass, the cleaning supplies, and make changes to the space to keep everyone safe. I cannot tell you how much easier it made my job when I could immediately agree to the new ideas staff brought to me, because I knew we had the funds to cover these expenses. I am grateful I had this support, and the impact it had on the people turning to EHM for help, can’t fully be expressed in words.
The management team spent a lot of time learning, and paying attention to changes and trends. We were active in networks, stayed in touch with our colleagues, read the news, watched webinars, etc.. What are food banks experiencing? What is being reported in the news? When were emergency shelters scheduled to shut down? We monitored everything around us, trying to understand what was causing changes, and tried to anticipate what would be coming next.
Finally – keeping our eye on the ball. While we all got butterflies every time we solved a new problem, changing how we operated also created a lot of stress – new things to learn, new habits to pick up, and it meant we had to stare into the unknown. EHM staff were incredible – always determined to find a solution to every new problem. It also meant experiencing discomfort and grief – especially if we had to let something go. That I think was one of the hardest parts – losing comfort, losing habits, and letting go of things that were truly good and enjoyed by many people. But by stepping back and focusing on the “what” are we trying to do for the community, rather than get caught up in the “how”, is what allowed staff to brainstorm incredible ideas and helped us to start new services, new activities, and do more things for more people. And that is what change is about.