By Kendall Worth!
I have been actively advocating for the launching of a Social Prescribing Organization (SPO) here in Halifax for some time now in this BLOG. And most strongly since I attended a national conference on this topic last September, - as I reported here.
The case I make for an SPO is rooted in the two main issues that aggravate the mental health challenges faced by many Income Assistance recipients: poverty and social isolation.
Issue #1 – Poverty: The poverty faced by Income Assistance recipients contributes SIGNIFICANTLY to the mental health challenges that many people in my community deal with on a day-to-day basis. As I have argued before here and here, Income Assistance rates have been so low in Nova Scotia that the stresses and strains of just trying to get by every month on such an inadequate income greatly increases stress and anxiety and exacerbates any existing mental health challenges.
Issue #2 – Social Isolation: I have also addressed in recent BLOG posts how the social isolation of those on Income Assistance serves to INCREASE the mental health challenges that many in my community face. Some of this isolation is rooted in the social stigma that IA recipients can face in public spaces: experiences of such stigma can be traumatic and anxiety producing. Such incidents can drive Income Assistance recipients to avoid public spaces which only increases their social isolation, which in turn increases their social anxiety, which in turn increases the risk of stigma and even greater anxiety. In such a cycle, it becomes difficult for IA recipients to break out of their isolation to build and maintain healthy friendships, as I have discussed here and here.
In this current BLOG post I want to connect the dots between these two issues and the need for a Social Prescribing Organization (SPO) in Halifax. This is based on my recent conversations with two First Voices, - Sam and Mike. As usual, these are their chosen pseudonyms (“Fake Names”, not their real names), as we try to respect their privacy rights and minimize the risk of added stigma.
Sam and Mike are two of the many people in Halifax who are on Income Assistance. They describe their weekday routine as follows:
• Early mornings: 7am breakfast at the Brunswick Street Mission.
• Mid-morning: to Hope Cottage for Soup and Sandwich
• Noon: lunch at Souls Harbour
• Late Afternoon: 4:45 pm back to Hope Cottage
• Evenings: At home.
Over the weekends, many of these agencies are closed, so IA recipients are much more isolated and often alone in their homes, as I have written about here. They often stay there until late Sunday afternoons, when they can visit St Andrews for their Sunday Supper, which I was happy to discover and then wrote about in a BLOG last year. That is pretty much their social life, apart from the one day every three weeks when they visit their local Food Banks, to stand in line in order to re-stock their kitchens with a few groceries.
Both Sam and Mike tell me that although they encounter many people at these different venues, they are not in fact friends with many. It was only through reading my BLOGs on Social Prescribing that they began to appreciate how such an SP program or organization could help them break out of their social isolation and support them to take a new direction in life. They shared the challenges they face in finding a group of people with whom they feel comfortable, - people who will not view them with stigma.
Sam, Mike, and many others in my community feel confident that a well organized and managed SPO would give them the opportunity to meet and socialise with people in a secure, accessible, affordable and comfortable setting.
With regards to the negative impact that poverty has on Income Assistance recipients, the only direct solution to this problem is to increase IA rates. While we have seen some modest increases recently, these are clearly not adequate to lift people out of poverty.
This is why I have suggested in previous BLOGs the notion of a comprehensive Basic Income program, as an alternative approach. One of the possible benefits of an SPO program would be that it could provide an opportunity for IA recipients to come together and engage in discussions about such issues. Perhaps they might even start to engage in joint activities, such as advocating for programs such as Basic Income that would help the people in my community in very real and tangible ways.
It seems clear to me that these First Voices only re-inforce the case for why our community needs the services and programs of a Social Prescribing Organization!
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