At the Mayors’ Dinner, Working Centre Board Chair, Carol Taylor, announced: Tonight we are celebrating the way that this community has supported Making Home – an invitation to build housing and a new home for St. John’s Kitchen – creating a place of hospitality that welcomes our neighbours who are living without housing.
On May 15th, 2025, we had the pleasure of meeting with Fr. Greg Boyle who was in town to present a Lecture in Catholic Experience at St. Jerome’s University. The following is an excerpt from Fr. Greg’s talk
Carol Taylor is widely known for her volunteer work with several different groups over many years, and has a long history of being a supporter of causes and organizations in her roles as senior staff member, Board Member and Committee Member. Her work and quiet leadership style have had a positive impact on many people’s lives and have strengthened our community.
For the past two years, Joanna Miller has been leading a quarterly Memorial Service at St. John’s Kitchen. Each quarter we have remembered up to 25 people who have died during that time from the wider community of those connected to the St. John’s Kitchen community. Here is part of the reflection by Joanna from the service held at St. John’s Kitchen on May 27th, 2025.
Our Specialized Outreach Services (SOS) is a mobile multidisciplinary team that supports individuals who are experiencing homelessness or are precariously housed and who are experiencing medical, mental health and/or substance use concerns. SOS is designed to provide low barrier clinical care to individuals who may have difficultly accessing other traditional supports. The SOS team is comprised of social workers, nurses and outreach workers who work alongside physicians, nurse practitioners, hospitals, police, and the court/probation system.
Construction continues on the Making Home project. The third floor addition including the roof, windows, walls and blue skin are all completed. The framing for the units on the third floor is complete along with plumbing, electrical and HVAC rough ins. Drywall is the next step. When you drive by 97 Victoria you can see the new windows donated by Strassburger Windows. They were installed in late November before the cold weather took hold. The second floor is now at the framing stage with progress towards completing plumbing rough-in and the HVAC rough-in along the main hallway.
Community Dental has been fortunate to receive a grant from the Accerta Health Access Foundation Grant to support volunteer Dentists and Hygienists to provide dental services to those individuals who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. We appreciate the help of Joe Cheira, Co-ordinator for Government Relations and Advocacy, Ontario Dental Association for helping to make this grant possible. This year there have been 9 dentists and 2 hygienists who volunteered at Community Dental and three other volunteers who help in the clinic.
The Region of Waterloo National Housing Day 2024 Planning Committee acknowledged The Working Centre Family with this year’s Christine Wilson Outstanding Housing Community Worker Award!
Dear Friends, this past year has been a year of movement and renewal. The structural steel beams creating a third floor for the 44 new housing units at 97 Victoria symbolizes the energy throughout The Working Centre, directed towards building and shifting spaces that make a difference in people’s lives.
After considerable remediation work on the building at 256 King, we are ready to open our doors. We have intentionally crafted the space at Fresh Ground to be an oasis of brightness and calm, with close to 1,000 plants helping us to build fresh ground as a gathering place.
We are introducing a new menu that celebrates community, sustainability, and the joy of sharing meals. This menu will be available at Fresh Ground, in take home meals and catering options.
The Integrated Circle of Care is a fluid and collaborative approach followed by workers from different agencies weaving through St. John’s Kitchen. Within this approach, staff members from each agency are aware of their specific personal roles. However, the high level of collaboration between workers means that people can approach any worker, without knowing their agency association or specific role, and still receive support – either that worker will support the person directly, or they will introduce the person to another worker who can support the person more appropriately.
This approach makes relationships more natural and support more accessible. Workers from different agencies are easily approachable, meaning that people build relationships with multiple workers. Having relationships with different workers is important to a person’s support – it makes support from a trusted source easy to find, and means that people have a choice of worker to approach in any given situation.
In order to maintain a circle of care around a person, workers from different agencies ask for consent from the person for information to be shared between workers. Continuous communication between workers helps to ensure that people do not fall into gaps between services, and also that services are not duplicated.
