Joshua
Case worker
Social Reintegration,
In-home assistance
At the heart of the mission of Maison du Père is the will to work over the long term, towards empowering the participant. To achieve this, we assign particular employees to social support. They help the participants keep their home, but not only that, since some of their beneficiaries do not have housing. Joshua is one of those employees.
Joshua is a psychosocial worker at Maison du Père. He studied human sciences at Cegep, then completed a bachelor's degree in psychology at Bishop's University in Sherbrooke. He landed a job at Maison du Père in 2014, a few months after graduating. He does this job because, as he says, he enjoys "helping people find solutions to their problems. I am a pragmatist.” 90% of users followed by social support have housing, whether it be private housing, supervised housing, etc. The rest still live on the streets.
The tasks of his work are numerous. “A lot of our job is about helping attendees with the budget, paying bills, paying rent, debts… That’s the financial side of the service,” he says. These questions represent about 50% of the work done with participants. This includes invaluable assistance in finding accommodation. Because, as Joshua explains, Maison du Père gives landlords the certainty that the rent is paid, when the user is looking for accommodation, even if the participant's credit is not good, because the trust service of Maison du Père partially manages the participant's income and ensures their payments.
Then, "if the participant wants, we can help him with, for example, cooking, or doing grocery shopping. We also provide psychosocial support,” he explains. In addition, visits are organized to ensure the cleanliness of the home, to promote the well-being of the participants and to avoid any conflicts with the owners. Finally, some participants do not necessarily have a family doctor or social worker. So the employees establish links with the public health network.
Some users need little supervision from the start, while others want more help. But, in any case, to help participants, the employee has to "know where participants want to go. If it doesn't come from themselves, a lot of work will be done for nothing." …and, at some point, “we're going to tell them: 'You know, there are some things you can do without us.' Then, we’re going to help them get to a point where they don't need out support anymore. Because, ideally, what we tell our participants is that we help them as long as they need it, but our end goal is that they no longer need us, and no longer need Maison du Père, “ he says.
How does Joshua define his approach, to gain the trust of participants? He replies: “There really isn't one approach for these people, because 'these people' are us. It's us with some bad luck, with a bad experience, with a house fire or a divorce. It’s not a homeless person that I see, when I do an intervention, it is a person who needs support.”