By Kendall Worth
Hello Minister Thompson,
My name is Kendall Worth, and I am writing to you today because you are the current Minister of Health and Wellness for Nova Scotia. I am reaching out to you publicly through this open letter to introduce you to my For What Matters journalism BLOG, where I advocate for a large population of people living in poverty here in Halifax, Nova Scotia — the community I belong to.
Just in case you have not seen it yet, I have already written a
detailed open letter to your colleague, Minister Barbara
Adams:
https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/2025/11/an-open-letter-to-minister-barbara-adams.html
Why I Am Writing to You
Because you are the Minister of Health and Wellness, my #1 reason for writing is to make you aware that many of the people I advocate for are not only living in poverty — they are also dealing with serious health issues.
As this blog post explains, income assistance rates are nowhere
near enough for people to survive
on:
https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/2025/10/income-and-community-overlooked-factor.html
Beyond the financial crisis, there are major concerns about the
health of people living in poverty, including barriers to day surgery
and other medical
procedures:
https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/search/label/day%20surgery
Mental health is also a major concern. Many of the people I
advocate for are not only clients of the Employment Support and
Income Assistance (ESIA) program — they are also clients of
the mental health system in Nova
Scotia.
https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/search/label/mental%20health
https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/search/label/mental%20health%20issues
The Gap in Mental Health Services
While Minister Adams is — hopefully — working to make income assistance more substantial, the mental health system is not offering the full range of supports that people need.
In other jurisdictions, mental health services include Social
Prescription programs and Social Prescribing
organizations, which help people build community, reduce
isolation, and improve mental health
outcomes:
https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/search/label/social%20prescription
https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/search/label/social%20prescribing
I first learned about the existence of social prescriptions when I
was reporting for the now-folded Nova Scotia
Advocate:
https://nsadvocate.org/2019/01/28/kendall-worth-on-friendship-poverty-and-feeling-discouraged/
More reasons why this kind of organization is needed can be found
here:
https://nsadvocate.org/2017/03/27/downright-difficult-kendall-worth-on-friendships-ending/
Why Your Department Must Get Involved
The Department of Health and Wellness must play a strong role in finding solutions for income assistance recipients because so many of them are also patients of the mental health system.
When people go to doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and counsellors, they often walk away with no real solutions to the problems they face. Poverty forces thousands of Nova Scotians into daily social isolation — through no fault of their own.
As I pointed out in my letter to Barbara Adams, the ESIA transformation that began under the previous Liberal government was left unfinished. If it had moved faster and produced real results before Tim Houston became Premier in 2021, things would not be as bad as they are today.
A Real Example That Worked — Until Funding Ended
Here in Halifax, we briefly had a program that resembled
a social prescribing organization. For one year we ran what began as
the Mitigating Social Isolation
Project:
https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/search/label/mitigating%20social%20isolation
Our first event is documented
here:
https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/2023/06/june-12th-event-by-mitigating-social.html
For our second event, we renamed it All Together
Link:
https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/2023/09/all-together-link-mitigating-social.html
More posts about All Together Link can be found
here:
https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/search/label/All%20Together%20Link
The project was funded through the Community Health Board, but
ultimately had to
end:
https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/2024/06/all-together-link-is-coming-to-end.html
At the very end of the project, the organizers — myself included — strongly felt that we were finally succeeding at building community and reducing isolation. My personal hope was that this would evolve into a full social prescribing organization, but unfortunately that did not happen.
A Call to Action
Minister Thompson, the problems I am talking about are not abstract. They affect real people every single day. People are suffering in poverty, suffering in isolation, and being told to wait for solutions that never come.
Your department has the power to change this. Nova Scotia needs:
Social prescribing programs
Mental health services that actually address isolation
Income support that allows people to live with dignity
A health system that understands poverty as a health emergency
I urge you to take leadership in making this happen.
Yours truly,
Kendall Worth
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