Partner Promotion - Edmonton John Howard Society (EJHS)
Edmonton John Howard Society - Lori (Team Lead of EJHS Family Violence Prevention Programs)
A big part of The Today Centre’s ability to provide our clients connection to vital resources is possible through the partnerships we have with organizations in and around Edmonton. These partnerships allow our Family Violence Specialist team to connect our clients with further support beyond what we are able to provide them here at The Today Centre. Whether it is from finding housing and shelter, legal assistance, English Language Learning programs, applying for EPOs (Emergency Protection Orders), mental health support, or more, the partnerships we make with other organizations enable us to connect our clients to help they need beyond assistance with family violence. These partnerships are vital to the services we provide! And did you know that we have partnerships with over 50 organizations in Edmonton and area? We truly value each and every partnership we make!
Since these partnerships are so important to the work that we do and the service we can provide our clients, we wanted to highlight some of them in a partner promotion series. We sat down with Lori, the Team Lead of Community Safety and Wellbeing Family Violence Prevention Program, to ask a few questions about the services Edmonton John Howard Society (EJHS) provides and what our partnership with them looks like. Check out her answers below!
About Edmonton John Howard Society
What does EJHS ‘do’?
Our mission statement really summarizes the work that we do in an exceptional way. It states, “Through our programs and services, we work to prevent crime and to help people affected by crime”. Our vision with that is, “safety and harmony in our community”, which is what we are hoping to see and is our big objective.
Where does the name ‘john howard society’ come from?
There are many John Howard Societies across Canada, including the Edmonton John Howard Society, and we take our names and spirit from an 18th century humanitarian named John Howard, whose name is a symbol of humane consideration for incarcerated individuals.
Back in 1773 John Howard began his work as a prison reformer, as the Sheriff of Bedford. Over the next twenty years he worked tirelessly to improve the terrible conditions of prisons. He was not afraid to voice concerns and critiques on prison conditions. His work set an example that has become a cornerstone of John Howard Societies, which is that there cannot be effective crime prevention without community participation.
What is the history of EJHS? How did the organization start and how long has it been around?
In 1866 the Howard Association was formed in England to continue John Howard’s work. This Association merged with the League of Penal Reform in 1921 to form the ‘Howard League of Penal Reform’.
The first official John Howard Society in Canada was founded in Vancouver in 1924. The John Howard Society of Alberta was established in 1948 and the Edmonton John Howard Society has been serving the city since 1949.
Additionally, the Family Violence Prevention Centre was originally established in 1997 to address services gaps of people affected by family violence and to meet the needs of diverse groups within the community. In 1999 the Center became a program under EJHS and has been around ever since.
Programs & Services
Who does Edmonton John Howard Society serve? What is the purpose and intent behind EJHS?
Getting down to what we ‘do’ and who we serve is a very big question. We are very fortunate in the sense that we are quite a large agency, so we do have multiple different programs. All of our programs support and serve various different types of clients. We offer youth programs, varying adult programs, and we have a program that runs out of one of the institutions here in Edmonton. We are able to support clients that are aged sixteen+, so we do see a variety of folks accessing our programs and services.
The intent behind EJHS is to work with people to eradicate the root causes of crime so that we can work towards building safe and healthy communities. Some of the ways we do that are through promoting an awareness of the problem of crime and its impact on society, we encourage greater responsibility within the community for crime prevention, and we provide services to people who are, or have the potential to be, in conflict with the law or who have been victims of crime.
What programs and services does EJHS offer?
We have our Independence Apartments and 101 Street Apartments, which are community-based residential facilities offering support for adult males who are on conditional release under the authority of the Parole Board of Canada.
Donnelly House, is an eight bed, three-month transitional housing facility for men and women sixteen years of age or older, experiencing homelessness.
Journey Home, a six-bed long-term housing, outpatient facility for adult males under the authority of the Alberta Review Board and the Forensic Assessment community services not criminally responsible outpatient team.
We have the Edmonton Drug Treatment Court, which is an intensive minimum one year, court supervised, drug treatment program where participants are supported in overcoming drug dependence to reduce their criminal involvement and help them reintegrate into community.
We offer Family Violence Prevention programs, which includes Community Outreach, Partner Safety Check, Furniture Program, Nalah Centre, and the Domestic Violence Complaint & Assistance program (DVCAP). All of those programs operate within the same sphere, supporting victims of family violence.
Community Outreach: supports clients who are experiencing family violence with emotional support, advocacy, working together on goals to help them live an abuse free life, and other support as needed.
Partner Safety Check: provides support and services for the partners of individuals who are participating in treatment through forensic assessment and community services.
Furniture Program: works in partnership with FIND and it provides gently used furniture for individuals or families who have recently left family violence situations.
Nalah Centre: supports and advocates for victims of intimate partner violence in collaboration with community agencies and the Government of Alberta. This program is designed to be one point of contact for victims in criminal docket court.
Domestic Violence Complaint & Assistance: supports and advocates to assist in navigating the court process relating to domestic violence.
We also operate two youth housing programs, Nova which is a voluntary, twenty-bed, harm-reduction-focused supportive housing environment for youths aged 16 to 24 who are experiencing homelessness, and the LOFT which is a voluntary supported living environment for males aged 16 to 24 who are experiencing or are at risk of homelessness and are committed to sobriety. The Youth Housing First Program supports youths aged 16 to 24 who are experiencing homelessness by assisting them in finding and maintaining sustainable housing over a nine-month period of time.
Our Adult and Youth Support Services (AYSS) program offers a variety of free services that aim to reduce barriers, while offering one-on-one support and empowering clients to reach their goals. Some of the services offered through this program are employment support, which includes support in working on resumes, cover letters, and job searches. They provide information on release planning, record suspensions, and connections and referrals to appropriate community resources. They also offer Building Foundations courses focused on anger management, financial literacy, and employment preparation. These workshops are offered by self-study or in-person. Also through AYSS, we offer:
Edmonton Remand Center programming. The Creating Awareness Program offers free workshops to folks incarcerated at the Edmonton Remand Center focused on communication, financial literacy, employment preparation, stress management, and pre-release planning.
The WrapED program is a collaboration between EJHS, Edmonton Police Services, Multi-cultural Health Brokers, Native Counselling Services of Alberta, REACH Edmonton, and YOUCAN Youth Services. It works with youth aged 16 to 24 in connecting with youth workers or a wraparound facilitator in making positive changes in their lives. Our Shift Program, similar to WrapED, is for youth aged 16 to 24 with some type of justice involvement, and assists them in getting connected to resources and making positive changes in their lives.
Shift assists vulnerable youth, aged 16 to 24 at risk and/or being criminally-involved to gain skills, knowledge and confidence to successfully transition to adulthood. The program will follow best practices in working with vulnerable youth, and combine it with research and practices from the Wraparound, Strength-Based, Resiliency, Harm Reduction, Relationship-Based, Trauma Informed, Brain Development, Child Development, and Grief and Loss models.
The Integrated Offender Management (IOM) is a partnership with Edmonton Police Services, Edmonton John Howard Society, The Mustard Seed, George Spady Society and Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society. The objective of the partnership is to assist individuals with their willingness to participate in the desistance of criminal behavior in the Edmonton community utilizing appropriate case management strategies for each individual. and Grief and Loss models.
The Community Case Management and Supervision (CCMS) program is a national program being delivered for the Border Services of Canada in part by John Howard Societies across the country. It is a risk-based community release program as an alternate to detention for immigrants involved in the criminal justice system. Edmonton John Howard Society is responsible for delivering the program including eligibility assessment, enrolment, development of a case plan, and compliance reviews.
How are people able to access EJHS’s services?
Staff from Youth Housing First and LOFT attend YEG Youth Connect to hand out candy and popcorn!
It does really depend on the program. Some of them are mandated programs, like our community-based residential facilities by the Parole Board of Canada, and others are voluntary. In our Family Violence Prevention Centre some of our programs take self-referrals and some do not.
The best way to connect is through the contact information on our website. We have a phone number and an email address you can send general inquiries to; we can then further direct you from there. The most appropriate phone number for connection to the right program is (780) 428-7590.
Visiting our website will offer all the specific program contact numbers and information you might need, along with any applicable emails for contact.
What are the agency’s core values? What do they represent within the organization?
At EJHS, we believe every individual has intrinsic worth and has the right to be treated with dignity and respect. We believe in the potential of all human beings and in their capacity for growth and change. We believe that all individuals have the right to live in a safe and peaceful society and that justice is best served through measures that resolve conflict and restore harmony. We believe that individuals are responsible for their own actions and must be held accountable for those actions. We believe that the root causes of crime are found in communities and the solutions to crime are also found within communities. We believe in serving community needs by cooperating and collaborating to achieve a healthy and safe society.
Our values truly guide the everyday work that we complete across all of our programs. Our values strongly contribute to our client-centered focus and our ability to meet clients where they are at in their journey to support them with whatever they might need to move forward.
our partnership
How do you see the benefit of a partnership/collaboration with The TOday Centre?
Having such a strong partnership with a fellow organization within the community offers so much. It helps us increase our ability to support the people that we serve who might be impacted by family violence. It allows us to coordinate program and service delivery to ensure that shared clients receive well-rounded supports. EJHS and The Today Centre also share very similar values as organizations and are very likeminded in the way that we support our clients, which has really helped us work together with such ease. Our partnership has also allowed us to provide supported referrals to each other’s programs, so we are able to bridge our services to allow for smooth transitions for our clients so that they continue to get the supports they need. We consult regularly, share information, and opportunities, which is very beneficial in the ever changing world we sometimes live in.
EJHS Teams from Youth Housing First, Adult Youth Support Services, and Donnelly House show their pride!
What have you been able to achieve with this partnership?
We have a few programs throughout EJHS that connect a lot with The Today Centre, particularly among our Family Violence Prevention programs. We truly have an amazing working relationship with The Today Centre. It’s awesome that we have the freedom and ability to reach out, collaborate, or communicate, so if something comes up that we have questions about, we know we have a good partner to reach out to and vice versa, which is super amazing.
There is also lots of collaboration between our organizations through the facilitation of The Today Centre’s Family Violence Across the Lifespan workshop with Lorraine from EJHS. We regularly attend Group Case Consultation hosted monthly by your Family Violence Specialist team and we connect often informally every week for various questions and inquiries.
How are you grateful for our partnership and see it moving forward in the future?
I am particularly extremely grateful for our relationship with The Today Centre and I am really excited to see what the future holds for our collaboration and partnership. It has been such a fun partnership and I really hope we are able to continue to work together in the future.
Where do you see Edmonton john howard society growing in the future?
We do have some stuff in the works currently that will be really exciting for some of our different programs to expand on. I hope we can continue the way that we support folks out in the community moving forward. Stay tuned…
Get in Touch with Edmonton John Howard Society
Address
10010 105 Street NW, Edmonton, AB T5J 1C3