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Peace Out Poverty highlights various aspects of poverty impacting the Alberta Capital Region community and what philanthropists in their 20s and 30s can do to take action.
[Samantha] Hello! My name is Samantha Baxter. Welcome to Season 3 of Peace Out Poverty, the podcast that discusses social issues in the Alberta Capital Region, offering you the necessary tools to make a positive difference in your community!
[Samantha] Today, we'll be introducing you to 211 Alberta—a comprehensive Information and Referral system that connects Albertans in need to the right resources and services. This network helps people find a foothold out of desperate situations, stabilizing those of us who feel like we’re standing on shifting sands. This episode, we’re going to be giving you the 411 on the 211.
[Samantha] When we talk about supporting those grappling with Edmonton’s current social climate– a climate that is rooted in a range of social problems, including addiction, violence, houselessness, and mental illness—we are talking about a broad possibility of methods, agencies, resources, and services for people experiencing a wide range of needs. Crisis intervention is often a short-term support solution for people who need immediate help, with the hope of connecting them to longer term resources.
[Samantha] One of Alberta’s largest and most interconnected crisis intervention resources is 211 Alberta— a support hotline available through phone by dialing 2-1-1 or texting INFO to 211. You can also visit the website at ab.211.ca to access a variety of resources and services that strive to meet your community needs, such as Disaster Resources, Disability Supports, and Crisis and Addiction Supports.
[Samantha] Resources such as 211 Alberta become even more necessary when we examine data from the Canadian Mental Health Association that reveals one in five Canadians will suffer from a mental disorder in their lives, with only 43% of people seeking professional help. The state of houselessness in Canada is equally disheartening; in 2021, Statistics Canada captured 19% of the Prairies as experiencing unsheltered or absolute homelessness, with a further 19% experiencing “hidden homelessness,” a circumstance that describes people in temporary living situations with family or friends, or in hotels or motels. When we consider the ever increasing cost of living, with soaring inflation rates and higher prices at the gas pump, grocery store, and everyday bills, it’s no surprise that more and more Albertans are feeling like they need extra support.
[Samantha] To further examine the impact 211 Alberta has in the Capital region, we are going to have a conversation with Stephanie Wright, the 211 Alberta Manager. In our dialogue, Stephanie informs us of 211 Alberta’s vision in operating as an organizational channel or connecting network to the right information and services accessible to all Albertans in need. Stephanie reflects on 211’s position in our local community as a trusted, timely, and effective tool for accessing information and referrals to community resources, ultimately facilitating the effectiveness of front-line delivery.
[Samantha] But first thing’s first – 211 isn’t the only three digit number you can dial in our community. Before we get too far into how awesome 211 Alberta is. Let’s first address what 211 is not.
[Stephanie] If you are in any physical danger, call 9 1 1 for things like municipal services, like garbage, maybe your city taxes, your road construction, if you've got a pothole, those are things where you can call 311. For anything else, just call 211. The thing about 211 is because we cross such a swath of the social determinants of health, we're there to answer all kinds of questions and to help people get connected to all sorts of services.
[Samantha] Alright, with that important distinction cleared up we can dive into how the network first started and how it has changed over time, Stephanie...
[Stephanie] So 211 actually got its start in Atlanta, Georgia in 1997, and in Atlanta, the United Way had come up with, the idea of 211 as this three digit number that you could dial for information and referral. And so 211, came to Edmonton in 2004, and then in 2020 we were finally launched across the province.
[Stephanie] Things over the years have continued to get more complex and the challenges that people are facing and the different needs that they're trying to navigate have become more complex. So where 211 started as something that was very basic information and referrals, sort of getting a phone number for your local agency so you could access, I don't know, like a food hamper service, we really shifted now to be a service that is for system navigation and care coordination and getting people connected. And so where it started out as a simple three digit number to call, we've expanded that too, because people like to reach out in different ways. So certainly we are always available 24 hours a day, seven days a week by phone and dialing 211, but you can also text us now, you can chat with us online, or you can use our online search tool as well. Again, it's really about us being able to respond to the needs in communities. So people want to reach out in different ways. Some people are comfortable talking on the phone, some people aren't so we've evolved in that way to address the changing needs. We've really had to step up into more of that system navigation space and helping people in their journey to, to get the supports that they need.
[Samantha] 211 Alberta is a partnership between United Way of the Alberta Capital Region, Canadian Mental Health Association Edmonton, and Distress Centre Calgary. So when you dial 211 you might be wondering, “who picks up?” And “what sort of training do they have to be able to support people with such a wide and diverse variety of needs and backgrounds?” We’re going to talk to one of those system navigators, but first, we asked Stephanie to walk us through what a call would be like and what a caller can expect.
[Stephanie] What can they expect when you call? You're going to reach a real live person. So there will be an initial recorded greeting but then you reach a real live person who is willing to listen and can, and lend an empathetic ear. And this is true, whether you're dialing to 211 and talking on the phone, or if you're texting or chatting, it's no matter which way you reach out, you're reaching a real person who cares and is going to listen. And what happens when you reach out the navigator will help will help you talk through what's going on for you. Some people know exactly what they're looking for and can be really direct and asking for what they want. And some people they're unpacking a lot of stuff going on. So the 211 navigator can ask questions, just to better understand the situation and what the primary needs are of the person in the course of that conversation. It's not sort of a checklist. It's actually a conversation because these are real life people who are connecting with you as a human to human. They're also listening for any possible risks. Because there are times when people can be phoning about one thing and then through the course of the call maybe we identify that there might be a risk of suicide or domestic violence or or something like that. So our staff, our, our navigators are also trained to, look out for that, those risks and address those if needed. If there aren't any risks, once we've identified what's going on for you, the navigator is then going to provide you with a couple of resources that might fit you best based on what we understand about your situation. And then we talked about that earlier about sort of what the eligibility is for a service when it's available. Sometimes asking for help is hard, and sometimes people can benefit from a little sort of advocacy and coaching on how to access the service when they're, when they're reaching out to that next space. So, things like, make sure you bring your status card if you're accessing services at BITS organization, or, if you're not getting the support you need how can we, how do you ask for a supervisor? And we even, we'll even sort of do, a little coaching on how to, or role playing on how to ask for that supervisor if that's what the person needs help with to get connected to the right service, then that's what we'll do. And then, at the end of that call, we might offer a follow up. So to call back, in a week to 10 days or earlier than that, depending on what your situation is and wait for your consent for that.
[Samantha] 211’s mission is to connect people with the right need or resource at the right time. So when something like, say, a globally halting pandemic hits town, they have to pivot to assist people in large numbers whose lives have been suddenly turned upside down in a lot of unfamiliar and uncomfortable ways. Stephanie tells us more about 211’s shift in the pandemic, and how they help others during a large scale crisis.
[Stephanie] So, we were actually scheduled to go provincewide in the fall of 2020. So we had received funding the year prior. But then the pandemic hit, so we launched early, so we launched in July 2020. So that was our first adaptation during the pandemic. But early on in those first weeks of the pandemic, as to be expected in any sort of disaster situation 211 haws a role to play in responding to community disasters of all kinds, including a pandemic, it was about basic needs a lot. And in those early days, we might all remember that everyone was uncertain. So access to services was really uncertain. So we were having to take down numbers and call people back once we had figured out when that food bank was next going to be open, or when that shelter was going to be open. It was a lot of, a lot of hard work by our navigators and curators to provide people with the best information possible in those early days when information was just changing hourly.
[Stephanie] Before the pandemic, we, we had seen just increasing complexity with calls. People were in the last 10 years, people have not been calling for just one issue. That complexity has continued to increase. The top needs people reach out to for 211 are usually housing and shelter, mental health assessments and treatments, financial assistance, legal services and food programs. When we see changes, the changes are sort of in the, the ratios, the proportions of calls to those areas, but those are consistently the top needs that we see on 211. We have seen increased calls around mental health related needs, like counseling and assessment and treatment. Certainly temporary financial assistance post pandemic, especially with some of the supports that were available. And now as we're having some, some, challenges with inflation, we're seeing higher financial needs for sure.
[Samantha] Regardless of the shifting needs, behind each of these calls for support is a personal story. To connect us on a more personal level, we asked to hear about the success stories that Stephanie carries with her through her work with 211.
[Stephanie] One of the stories that I've shared a few times is, a mother called in, it was recommended to her by her child services caseworker that she called 211 to get some counseling and addiction support. She, her children, they had been exposed to and experienced and violence in the home. So it was recommended that they also receive counseling. So the navigator spoke, we'll call her Kate, this mom, Kate, to confirm that her and her children were safe. It turned out Kate had separated from her husband, and her children, and she were safe at the time, she didn't really want to get into talking about the abusive situation she was in, and, and we're going to meet people where they're at, so the navigator respected that she didn’t want to talk about that. She had already been connected with Childrens Services and Kate really wanted to focus on getting some help for her own addiction support. She had no income and since separating, without her husband's income she was really in a tough place financially. Her caseworker had said that she wouldn't qualify for anything because of her husband's income though, because they were still in a state of marriage. So it was complex and accessing supports was challenging. She was able to get connected with some low cost and sliding scale counseling for herself. And connected her and then she was also connected with child and adolescent mental health for her kids, and then she was also connected to an outpatient services with Alberta health services through the addiction and mental health and Alcoholics Anonymous. And so what happened? A week later, so we did that follow up that Kate had consented to, and so a week later, she shared that she was able to get connected to resources, and that they had met her needs. And the quote we have from Kate was, “You were very helpful. So much easier than Googling and trying to figure things out on my own. We're a lot happier, about her and her kids. She says, we're a lot happier and feeling a lot stronger in our mental health. The 211 staff has really saved our lives.” That’s one that I, that sticks out in my memory, that had been shared.
[Samantha] Hearing how 211 Alberta helped Kate get the support she needed is a heartwarming illustration of how important 211 is for our community and that everyone knows that it is available. But there is a common misconception that still gets in the way of that vital first step of dialing 211.
[Stephanie] Where we're challenged is, 211 is then often thought of as, Oh, 211 for crisis diversion. And then that's all they think about 211 or 211 is just that seniors information phone line. So that's just for seniors. I shouldn't call that. But really, 211 is for everyone. What we want people to know is that if you are needing some sort of support, you're not sure where to start, you're hitting a rough patch, and you don't know where to turn, call 211 and we'll help get you connected to the resources that are best able to support having people understand that we are there for a variety of situations. If you think you might need help, please call 211. And if you think you know somebody who might need help, tell them about 211.
[Samantha] Danae Dobko is a community resource specialist at 211 who is directly working with Albertans to connect them to the resources they need, and helping them navigate the complicated web of support systems in the province. As a result she has a unique understanding of its impacts on callers, call takers, and communities and the training required to successfully answer these calls.
[Danae] For the training first of all we do receive training in kind of how to be trauma informed, how to provide crisis intervention, so when someone calls in and there's a risk that we've identified, for example, maybe there's some domestic violence, abuse, mental health, suicide, things like that, were trained on how to listen for those cues, how to ask those questions, and then how to assess the risk so that we can determine, is it safe to have a conversation with this person right now? Do we need to provide resources that are, kind of more emergency based, immediate? Or are we able to, look at things that are a bit more long term that they might be able to access tomorrow or, or the following week?
[Danae] Part of our training would also be looking at how to properly search for these needs. So we use taxonomy terms. , and so, yeah, within our database, you know, it'd be impossible for us to know all of the different resources that are available because when we provide resources for kind of Edmonton and Northern Alberta, including the Northwest Territories as well, and so we're trained on how to use taxonomy terms to Search and find those resources, we're also trained on how to assess for a variety of different needs. So, when someone comes in and they're needing, for example, access to a food bank. That lets us know that maybe they're experiencing some poverty and maybe we also need to ask if they need assistance in paying for their utility bills, other income supports, access to emergency or free clothing.
[Danae] We try to not make any sort of assumptions about the individual. We always want to ask those questions to see what needs they have and how their intersectionality might affect, the way, the needs that they have, but also how they access those needs.
[Danae] We're always going to want to ask some demographic questions, which are good for our data collection, documenting unmet needs, but also so that we can look into eligibility. So we might ask for gender, for age, for, Indigenous status, if they are a newcomer to Canada, if they require assistance in a different language. We do have, speaking of different languages, we do have access to an interpreting service that we can bring in to that call for someone who their first language is not English.
[Samantha] What Danae just mentioned is a really important feature of the 211 Alberta service. Translation services are an important way 211 is able to effectively help a broad population base of varying backgrounds. This service is offered in over 170 languages, including the Indigenous languages spoken across Canada, making the service more accessible and removing potential barriers. Another way 211 removes barriers is by advocating on behalf of the callers.
[Danae] One way that 211 Community Resource Specialists will advocate for our callers is by providing a warm handoff. What that might look like is someone calls in and, let's say that they're experiencing some addiction issues. And so they've shared their story with us and we're looking into some different resources that might be able to help them. And maybe we'll transfer them to a mental health line or the addictions helpline. So in that transfer after we've received consent from the caller to share their story, we can go ahead and share what they've already told us and, and then that way, they don't have to repeat themselves twice, and it just kind of helps in the transition of them having called into 211, looking for some resources, and then us connecting them with another professional that might be better suited to help them in this situation. Callers are often very appreciative of that step, and so that's really rewarding, and it feels good to help someone.
[Samantha] Stephanie mentioned this before, but the follow-up calls are also an important step in the process to anyone who is calling for a mental health related resource. We asked Danae to share her perspective on these calls and the impact working at 211 has had on her personally.
[Danae] We offer these follow ups as a way to check in to see if the resources were helpful, which is how we do collect some of that data and report statistics on unmet needs. We also check in to see if they need anything else at the moment, and to also do a quality survey for our own purposes. Sometimes when we make these follow up calls, and when we hear that the individual was able to reach out to those resources, and they did have their needs met, and things are going better for them, at least they're on the right track now, that is extremely memorable and just really heartwarming to hear.
[Danae] Working with 211 has been a really wonderful and eye opening job personally, because I'm going into the field of psychology and working towards becoming a psychologist, working for 211 has really opened my eyes to what resources are available that can help people in general, Albertans in general, but also people, and especially people living in poverty. So really just opening my eyes to what resources are available for people in poverty and the general population. It's also like really impacted me by hearing some of these success stories where someone might call in and maybe they have just received a disconnection notice from their utility company and they're extremely understandably overwhelmed and saddened and panicked and so just being able to look into which resources might be available to help them through this financial crisis. And then the impact, the positive impact that that can have on their life is really, really rewarding. And at the same time has opened my eyes to just how complex and difficult it is to access some of these programs and all of the unmet needs that do still exist for people, especially living in poverty.
[Danae] A challenging part is, you know, it is on that line of the unmet needs. It is heartbreaking when someone calls in and they - there's just nothing available for them, and letting them know that you are important, you are deserving, but unfortunately this is an unmet need, that's extremely challenging. There's a lot of situations where families might need access to immediate shelter. Maybe they're leaving a domestic violence situation, or maybe it's the whole family has been evicted from their current residence, or they had to leave just due to safety concerns and there's no family shelter in the Edmonton area that that's available. And so it's heartbreaking to let them know that I'm, I'm, I'm sorry, but there are no resources that can meet your need today. We do document these. That's part of why we take data collection, so that we can document these unmet needs and, and hopefully that'll help influence funding and different programs that are created going forward in the long term.
[Samantha] 211 does its best to connect people with the resources they need, and it is clear that the workers dealing directly with Albertans in need of support care about the people reaching out to them. However, no one program or network in the capital region can solve the problems in the area by itself. And in the background of every effort is a team of change makers volunteering or working for the betterment of the community. As a city and as a community we strive to grow together, to strengthen each other, and to lift each other up as the city and its needs grow and change. Danae pointed out that her work is not always easy – but it is always worth it. To close out this episode of Peace Out Poverty, let’s end with another success story from Stephanie, this time about a woman we’ll call Claire.
[Stephanie] Claire had called into 211, and she was referred actually about by Alberta works and hadn't heard about us before, but thankfully Alberta works was there to support us and refer Claire to us. When she called 211 she shared with the navigator that she had had a head injury that was impacting her ability to do sort of those basic daily living tasks. She was already connected with a social worker and psychiatrist, but really struggling with her medical care and wasn't finding her doctor helpful. When she kept trying to tell people about the troubles she was having, the response she was getting was “Well, unfortunately, you've fallen through the cracks.”
[Stephanie] She shared that getting around to appointments was a really big challenge because she could no longer drive following the head injury. And even get, taking the bus was challenging because she was getting lost. So, the navigator chatted with Claire about sort of the advocacy options that she could take if she really felt like her needs weren't being met and that she wasn't getting the care that she needed, so she was provided referrals on how to look for another doctor, as well as a way to report her issues to the patient advocate, if she so chose. She was also connected with a local solutions navigation program at our FCSS that could help, including starting her for an AISH application, which would help her income. And a few weeks later with a follow up with Claire, she was waiting for a call back, and had a plan to reach out to the health advocates if things wouldn't work out with her doctor. Before closing the call, Claire shared, “It was a great experience in calling 211. You've been wonderful. I learned things I did not know and knowledge is power. You were like my friends. Now I can turn to 211 for help when I need it.”
[Stephanie] And what I really love about what Claire shared, those are sort of the two main things that we look for to provide. We want to empower people, by providing them with the information and knowledge, as Claire said, the knowledge, they need to feel empowered to be able to advocate for themselves. And that other piece for two in one is about connection. When people are lost and they're trying to find their way they really benefit from just connecting with a human. So again, it's really important to us that when you're calling, texting, chatting, you're reaching a real human who's going to connect to you like a human. So when Claire says, “You're like my friends now, and I can turn to 211 for help when I need it”, that really speaks to what we're trying to do.
[Samantha] Listeners, if you’d like to follow our guests on social media, learn more about their organization, and check out the resources mentioned in this episode, all these links are listed in the show notes. Thank you for listening to Peace Out Poverty’s first episode of the third season! This episode was written and hosted by me, Samantha Baxter, with great help from the whole GenNEXT committee. Interviews were done by Feven Worede. This episode was produced by Castria. GenNEXT is a volunteer committee of United Way of the Alberta Capital Region. If you’d like to learn more or find out how you can be a part of the plan to end poverty and support your local communities, visit MyUnitedWay.ca.