Eva's Centralized Intake

This year Eva's launched a new coordinated intake process.  The process is the first of its kind in the City of Toronto for a youth shelter. The move to a coordinated intake team means that there is now:

• • Increased clinical assessment and analysis versus application
  • Simplified intervention at the intake level across Eva’s programs and services
  • Reduced navigation challenges
  • Building a circle of care for youth accessing our services

Key Accomplishments:

• • Applying an anti-oppressive and anti-Black racism lens to our work, while integrating clinical and community practices to best serve our youth.
  • Improving transparency and communication by implementing a centralized intake list for Eva’s programs to minimize young people being placed on multiple wait lists for services by the same agency.
  • Providing a single point of entry for access, screening and referrals to Eva’s programs and services. This ensures that youth in the shelter system who face unique challenges (aging out of child welfare, cycling through institutions) navigating institutions are ensured a commitment to a circle of care.

Learn more about Eva's Centralized Intake Process: https://www.evas.ca/evas-new-centralized-intake-system/

Eva's Print Shop

Eva’s Print Shop is a social enterprise and full-service digital printer that provides excellent quality products and services at competitive rates. The profits generated from Eva’s Print Shop are reinvested in organizational solutions to eliminating youth homelessness.

In addition to being a full service business, the Print Shop also offers a Graphic Communications and Print Training Program for young people.  The program is a 7-week introduction to the pillars of the graphic arts industry which helps graduates learn about print and graphic arts industry opportunities, job roles and provides important networking opportunities for students as they work to build their career. 

A key priority for the print shop this year was an expansion of services.   This expansion has allowed us to gain valuable insight into how to best integrate young people in work and help them build a career.  We’ve learned that the longer a participant is working and learning within the social enterprise the better their career or education prospects can be.  This year, we were able to do this by providing  six young people with full-time fully paid internship opportunities at the Print Shop. This gave them easier access to wrap around support services within Eva’s Initiatives while they learned and built their skills through the training program and real work experience.

Key Accomplishments:

• • Doubled production capacity of Eva’s Print Shop with extensive infrastructure improvements, including and expanded commercial offering and client base: Detox Market, Havas (Evoke Conference) ABC Life Literacy.
  • Established employment partnerships with Konica ReThink Print Event, Print Three, Marquis and Symcor
  • Extensive upgrades to the Graphic Communications and Print Course. Participants who complete program leave with Intermediate level understanding of Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Indesign. Hands on experience with digital print production equipment, T-Shirt production and wide format installation.

Learn more about Eva’s Print Shop: https://www.evas.ca/what-we-do/print-shop/ 

Eva's Phoenix - Transitional Housing Program

For Eva’s Phoenix, which provides transitional housing for 50 young people who live in 10 shared townhouse-style units, stabilization and growth of programs and operations has been a key priority this year. 

This year, we have had an opportunity to pilot a new follow-up supports model for young people. The new model allows youth to gain additional support for a full year after they lave moved out of Eva’s Phoenix. To date we’ve supported 35 youth with intensive case management support as they transition to living in the community.

At Eva’s we believe that no young person is an island and that the key to a young persons long term success is not learning independence but ‘INTER-dependence. Our new follow up supports model allows us to help young people build strong partnerships and wrap around supports with other agencies and organizations.

This past year, Eva’s Phoenix Transitional Housing program has also worked to increase the number of programs that support the development and growth of the young people we serve. These programs have worked to build and support their identity, self- esteem, culture, community networks and confidence. Our goal is to support young people to make pro-social choices that enable them to move from a place of surviving to thriving.

Key Accomplishments:

• • Stabilizing Operational Supports.
  • Increasing Life Skills programs – Over the past year we have had an array of programs that have supported the development and growth of youth to build their capacity in their identity, self- esteem, culture, community networks and life skills.
  • Building and maintaining Follow-up Support Services.

Learn More about Eva’s Phoenix – https://www.evas.ca/where-we-are/evas-phoenix/

Eva's Youth Belong Program

YOUth Belong is an inter-dependent living program for Black youth, developed by Eva’s Initiatives, in partnership with the City of Toronto and additional community partners. The project's mandate is provide Black youth leaving shelters with the lifelong skills and capacity to effectively navigate the systems that they will connect with daily, while rooting them in their communities and intersectional identities. The program has also successfully helped youth in developing individualized case plans, provided community and financial supports and working with youth on navigating multiple systems (justice, education, employment and healthcare).

Key Accomplishments:

• • The program has successfully helped youth in developing individualized case plans, provided community and financial supports and working with youth on navigating multiple systems (justice, education, employment and healthcare).
  • Eva’s has established an African-Canadian advisory committee to help guide the work of the YOUth Belong project.

Family Reconnect

Despite employment vacancies, which reduced the number of clients served this year, Eva’s Family Reconnect program continues to grow beyond our current capacity. In late 2019 we provided services to 344 participants, all of whom indicated that the Family Reconnect program is making a significant impact in their lives. The impact for youth who are interested in establishing, re-establishing and maintaining supportive relationship with their caring community is a significant step on the road to inter-dependence. Eva’s Family Reconnect Program Counselors are the bridge to these reconnections and help young people to navigate the difficult terrain of negotiating familial relationships, strengthening capacity and preventing homelessness in the process. Eva’s Family Reconnect Program understands that homeless acts as a medium to provide temporary relief from overwhelming experiences.

Drop-in sessions have also been an improvement to our services. We’ve seen an improvement in supporting youth who are experiencing mental challenges and with opportunity to connect them more quickly to the right resources, supporting their caregivers with training and building coping strategies have proven successful.

Key Accomplishments:

• • Provision of service to 344 participants
  • Created an agile response to mange the 25% of participants with immigration and settlement as issues impacting their relationship with caregivers.
  • Launch of brief therapy/drop-in session at Eva’s Place, Satellite and Phoenix

Read more about Eva’s Family Reconnect Program: https://www.evas.ca/what-we-do/family-reconnect/