Home Suite Hope

Residential

Our Program Purpose:

• Work with homeless or inadequately housed single parent families;
• Provide structured, goal oriented support;
• Help families gain financial management skills and increased earnings to live well, independently in the long term;
• Enhance social and family functioning.

Family Program Model

Our Family Program assists single parent families by providing innovative, affordable transitional housing accommodation, and support services that enhance a family’s capacities for improved social and family functioning and provides the education and employment skills to have families acquire the financial management tools, and income earning potential, to live independently and well-housed, long-term. This is achieved by providing safe, stable affordable housing and integrated and holistic support allowing lone parent families to develop the capacity to move away from transitional housing, regain their dignity, function competently and independently, and reach their full measure of potential.

HSH has a newly developed, Family Residential Program which provides integrated, holistic, “wrap-around” support to the families that we serve. The program involves:

1. 1)an intensive intake process to ensure that we have families that are ready to participate in the program and move forward in their lives;
2. 2)case management support by our team of highly trained, experienced and educated program staff;
3. 3)service coordination to access the best, most relevant and comprehensive community services for our families and to provide leadership in the coordination of these services for the most effective outcomes for our families;
4. 4)an “In-House” program component that provides workshop-style learning opportunities for our families at our facilities. Experts from the community lead workshops in areas such as positive parenting; communication; anger management; job interviewing; meditation; mindfulness; conflict resolution; nutrition; etc.;
5. 5)a discharge/graduation process for candidates that have successfully completed the program and are moving forward to independence;
6. 6)an After-Care program of up to 12 months for graduates that qualify. This helps families to integrate to their new independent residence while still being able to have some structured support from HSH;
7. 7)an Alumni Program to engage successful graduates in the program after discharge to volunteer at various levels of the agency;
8. 8)Evaluation and Continuous Improvement. The program is set up to be able to be evaluated objectively through various established evaluation tools; and
9. 9)Case Management Software . HSH is integrating technology to support the new family program with a tool – KaleidaCare Solutions – that has been chosen due to its applicability to agencies of our size and specialty in providing transitional housing and support programs.

What Our Participants Say...

Jane’s story

“I’m not your typical homeless person.” Jane grew up in England, studied biology and English literature and has worked internationally in theatre, including Cirque due Soleil. When Jane became pregnant, she and her partner moved to Canada. A second child soon followed and her partner went to Las Vegas to work. He never came back. “I tried to keep it together working and taking care of little children and was in this horrible fog. We were like three bags of garbage put out on the curb.” In hospital after a suicide attempt, Jane connected with Home Suite Hope. “Home Suite Hope has been a beautiful thing because it’s given me hope for being able to get my life back on track and with that comes two young people who also have a future.” Jane graduated from HSH this past summer having reached a completely new place of stability and serenity in her life, and is now living independently with her two young sons.

Rebecca’s story

Rebecca, a single mother of three teenagers, suffered a number of health problems, including breast cancer. She says she doesn’t even want to think about where her family would be without HSH. “They’ve been amazing to us,” she says. “There are a lot of people living in poverty and with issues but there’s not a lot of help out there. HSH has opened doors, given hope and landed us back on our feet. They’ve given us a second chance at life. They seriously have. For HSH to offer that to people is a wonderful thing. Whoever supports HSH is doing a very good thing.” Rebecca has just graduated from HSH and has been able to move forward to a stable and independent living accommodation with her three children.