STREET HEALTH'S ORIGINS

In 1986 a group of homeless people in Toronto met to discuss health care issues they were facing. They felt discriminated against within the health care system, and given their circumstances they were often unable to follow prescribed treaments. The group identified nurses as the people they would feel most comfortable going to for health care.

Upon learning of the initial discussions, a group of volunteer nurses opened the first Street Health nursing station in September, 1986 at the Toronto Friendship Centre drop-in, in the All Saints Church at Sherbourne and Dundas. Other nursing clinics followed, located where homeless people congregated, in order to provide hands-on health care and assistance in accessing and navigating the existing health care system.

STREET HEALTH TODAY

Street Health is a non-profit community-based agency providing physical and mental health programs to homeless and underhoused individuals in the southeast core of Toronto. Our work is focussed on the neighbourhood around Dundas and Sherbourne Streets, which has the largest concentration of homeless shelters and drop-in centres in Canada. The area is also distinguished by a large number of rooming houses and other forms of low income housing.

We provide our services on the street, in alleys, along the lakeshore, in parks and ravines, and in homeless shelters and drop-ins. The people we work with have lives characterized by extreme poverty, chronic unemployment, insecurity in housing, poor nutrition, high stress and loneliness; they also have more frequent and serious illnesses, and die younger on average than the general population. Our services include outreach nursing, mental health support and case management, HIV/AIDS prevention, a secure mail service, identification replacement, clothing and sleeping bag distribution, and support for those with Hepatitis C and prevention strategies for those at risk for the disease. We adhere to a harm reduction model in our programs.

Street Health works closely with others within and outside the social service sector who want to learn about health and homelessness from our experienced staff. Presentations and training sessions are regularly given to the general public, as well as to workers in the health, social service and government sectors.

Finally, our belief that the services we provide should, ideally, not be required finds expression in our advocacy work, both as advocates for individual clients and in more general advocacy for enduring social and political solutions.