THUNDER BAY – The Care Bus that Norwest Community Health Centres has operated for the past two years to help alleviate some of the struggles faced by people affected by homelessness may not be operating this year due to a lack of funding.
The Norwest Health Centre first launched the care bus in March of 2021, using a city transit bus to connect vulnerable people to services and providing care during the pandemic.
The pilot program was part of a call to action by the group Not One More Death, after several people died on the streets due to homelessness and the winter elements.
The care bus was equipped with harm reduction workers and supplies, along with nursing staff, and ran for four weeks that first year, then in year two, Kasper Transportation provided one of its buses and the care bus ran from December 2021 until March of 2022.
Norwest CEO, Juanita Lawson, says that they managed to afford to operate the care bus that second year because of support from the community as well as funding opportunities which allowed the bus to run for a four-month period.
“So, the Thunder Bay Indigenous Friendship Centre at that time in Northwest Community health centres as well had some had some available resources in terms of staffing and then as well through the Lakehead Social Planning Council through some emergency funding that they had,” she said.
“But now the care bus could be in jeopardy as there is currently no funding available to run it for a third year.”
Lawson says that the care bus, like many local organizations, is facing tough decisions due to the amount of funding they receive.
“if you spoke to any community organization, people are doing an incredible amount of work with the resources and the funds that they have,” she said. “[These] are just some realities of the needs in our community that are so great.”
As of now, the care bus will not be operating this winter as Lawson says that resources, which were more readily available to them during the pandemic, they no longer have easy access too, but she remains hopeful that something will change between now and when the real winter temperatures set in.
“To operate a service, you do need funding for this,” she said. “I would say that you know through COVID we saw there was a number of opportunities for different funding to tap into and we are still looking, and we are still trying to assess whether we can operate the bus as well.”
