THUNDER BAY — Workers on the Care Bus have helped people in the city more than 2,000 times this winter, with more than two months of operations to go.
The Care Bus is operated by NorWest Community Health Centres in partnership with the Thunder Bay Indigenous Friendship Centre and the Ontario Native Women’s Association and it averages about 70 encounters – or 70 unique individuals – a day.
NorWest Community Health Centres’ director of mental health and substance use program, Brittany D’Angelo, said some of those people will ride the bus and some just access services at the door.
The bus runs from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m., most days.
Often times people have to leave overnight shelters early in the morning and then will have nowhere to go until 1 p.m. when the Care Bus begins operations, said D’Angelo.
When the temperature falls below -25 C the hours are extended to 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
"We want to make sure that they have a warm, safe space from early on in the morning to 1 p.m. when our services start,” she said. “We also want to make sure that we're increasing accessibility to the other services that are offered on the Care Bus such as having a harm reduction support worker to talk to, doing referrals to other services and agencies within the city, and a lot of the things that our staff are helping the clients with on the bus.”
Staff will give out warm clothing to stay safe in the colder weather, but will also offer wound care, crisis intervention or getting people to the emergency department, if needed, or to meal programs at the Dew Drop Inn or Grace Place.
“(The Care Bus) is one of the most low-barrier services here in the community; it's open to anyone,” said D’Angelo. “It's a safe space. It's led by our staff that have lived or living experience with homelessness and addiction so they understand what the clients are going through and it might be different than accessing some of the other services in town where you don't know if people are going to understand what it is that you're going through on a daily basis.”
The Care Bus runs daily from December until March 31.
