Connecting and Belonging
The social connections that participants developed at the site
made them feel connected and experience a sense of belonging.
Relationships with staff
provided a sense of community at the site
and appeared to fill a void in participants’ lives.
Caring relationships with staff supported participants to develop more
meaningful
relationships with peers and
connection to external services.
Just the hurdle of getting through what I’ve been going through and again like how the support of the staff… has helped me along… They want the best for you. They want to make things easier for you and yea, they’re like that lifeline, that lifeline that you may not have any place but here.
– Participant 27
A broken heart
– Brian
They’re more than just staff, they’re friends too. The staff here, the staff are friends you know what I mean, they’re friends that support us regardless of our life choices… they care.
– Legend
[The site] helped with, like, kind of like, meeting a couple of friends here and being more sociable and [they] make it easier to talk about my thoughts and my feelings and opening up to other people.
– Participant 15
It brings us all together, we all come together outside, we all become friends you know. We talk inside because we get to know each other right because we’re all talking between each other… Ever since this place opened a lot of people do things differently.
– Participant 20
They do have an onsite nurse, they do have someone from CMHA, they do have someone from the addiction center, you know so there are avenues, there are roads that I can walk to get to these places that they [staff] inform me about that we didn’t have before [the site]. Like before [the site] it wasn’t so free to talk about the places we could go for help.
– Participant 22
