Some people would rather step over the hole

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

There’s a hole being filled on St. Paul Street — and, curiously, there are some residents there who don’t want to see it happen.

In fact, these residents take the entire NIMBY (not in my backyard) attitude to a ludicrous extreme.

It seems these residents don’t want to have children in their neighbourhood.

Not just any children, though.

These are children who would have fallen into that hole, were it not for the creativity of the city, the Interior Health Authority and the two women who run Insight Support Services (ISS).

Now, a cautionary note upfront: my son is a client of this support agency, so, while this has given me a front-row seat watching the two former nurses who run the agency work their magic, my son has also benefited from them.

But then, what good is an opinion column if you have no facts on which to base your opinion?

ISS is primarily an outreach business that provides assistance to families with developmentally disabled children.

As such, the bulk of their work is done out in the community, in peoples’ homes, in classrooms — in places children go.

But a small part of their work comes in keeping teenagers out of the hole that is the lack of any form of out-of-school care for the child who is a teenager chronologically, but not developmentally.

ISS owners Deb Hubic and Julie Chambers want to provide after-school care for these children, who don’t qualify for day care (they’re too old), group homes (they’re still living with their families) or any other IHA-sanctioned out-of-school care.

The two want to do this not in a sterile, clinical environment, but in a warm, cozy household setting, so they bought a home on St. Paul Street.

They’ve put plenty of work into it, restoring the outside to once again fit with the streetscape, painting and renovating inside and creating a place where kids want to come after school for tutoring help, for lifeskills training, for supervised care for those two or three hours between the end of the school day and the time mom and dad can pick them up.

The rest of the day, the house is as quiet as any other in the area where the kids are at school and the parents at work.

The house is also a safe environment for children who, left unsupervised as many teens are these days, might get into troublesome situations.

The house is also a comfort for those teens who are aware of their disabilities and don’t like the idea of going to a clinical setting for help.

They can come “home,” sit at the dining-room table and get help with their homework.

Or they can go into the basement and hang with others, all the while learning the social skills many disabled children lack.

Hubic and Chambers are concerned, however, that there are some neighbours fighting to force them out of the house.

As they point out, they could have bought it and turned it into a crack shack or an escort service, but that’s not who they are.

They’re helpers, people who have devoted the past 15 years to providing that much-needed guidance to families learning to cope with a developmentally disabled child.

They’re concerned enough that they’ll be at city council on Tuesday when a request for a temporary commercial licence for the house is introduced.

It’s the only way city and IHA officials can see to plug that hole, while others in the health authority work to develop a policy and get it approved to provide some sort of sanctioned care for these teens.

It seems so simple, though.

There are children in need.

There is help available for them.

It involves a couple of hours a day of child activity in a house.

And each time the child leaves and heads for home, he or she leaves a bit better, a bit stronger, a bit more aware or, perhaps, just a bit happier.

Seems to me it’s exactly the kind of atmosphere we’d want to see in all homes.

dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

dalebass.blogspot.com

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