The last year will be one we will never forget. While exhausting and emotionally draining for many, it was a year where we saw our community come together to support each other and find ways forward with strength and determination.
It was mid-March 2020 when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Over the coming days and weeks, everything flipped on its side as organizations worked quickly to find ways to continue supporting clients in an ever-changing landscape.
We knew COVID would present an extra level of challenge for vulnerable members of our community. “There are certainly a variety of reasons for which this population is at greater risk and will likely be disproportionately affected by coronavirus,” says Carlene Donnelly, CUPS Executive Director.
In the last year, more than 30 per cent of clients experienced a compounding effect from the pandemic. Many were isolated from friends, family and supports because they had no phone, computer or access to the internet. Others lost their job, had transportation issues and worried about their children as schools were closed and learning shifted online. In the early days of COVID-19, many of Calgary’s most vulnerable individuals and families were dealing with at least two additional challenges.
Early on in the pandemic, in-person Health Clinic visits were reduced to urgent care only and our nurses and staff worked quickly to establish new health and safety precautions and guidelines to keep clients and staff safe as they continued to provide important medical care. Non-urgent care was shifted to phone appointments.
In April 2020, longtime partners of CUPS, the Calgary Homeless Foundation and The Alex joined forces with many other agencies to activate an Assisted Self-Isolation Site. Vulnerable individuals who were symptomatic, tested positive or had been in contact with a person who has tested positive for COVID-19 could stay at the site. In the first five months of the pandemic, more than 300 Calgarians experiencing homelessness used the site.
It wasn’t just adults who were impacted by the pandemic. The closing of schools meant our Child Development Centre students were shifted to online learning. That meant rejigging lesson plans and helping our families get set up with what they needed to succeed in a remote classroom. Once they were set up, school continued as usual. Dalila said the shift was engaging for her two children and brought the family together.
Creating a seamless transition across all our service area was the focus of staff from the beginning. While in-person wasn’t always an option, we needed to maintain those connections and provide the support that our clients needed.
Over the course of the last fiscal, 83 per cent of interactions have been in some form of remote support. That includes everything from video conferencing, phone calls and other electronic communication as our staff worked to advocate for clients to other professionals, stay connected with families and help connect clients with community resources and additional supports.
While the remote support has been incredible, we missed the face-to-face connections of our clients, donors and volunteers in the last year. CUPS is a community in its own right and it’s the people — staff, clients and supporters — who come together to make an impact.
This global health crisis has had an effect on all of us. It has been stressful to say the least and often the ultimate test of resilience for many individuals and families.
Through strong partnerships, important collaborations and an entire community behind us, CUPS clients not only found their way through the year but many discovered a newfound sense of resilience they didn’t know they had.