Wood's Homes Blog

As a Master’s student in the clinical social work stream looking for – yet another – practicum, I had become disenchanted with the practice of experiential learning. In previous years, I had engaged in practicums that left me feeling lackluster, frustrated and exhausted with the system. During this search for the perfect opportunity to develop and expand my clinical ‘pallet’, I feel it is also worth mentioning that I was pregnant!

Convinced that I could do it all – the Masters of Social Work program, my clinical hours and raising a baby – I set out on a mission to make this practicum count. Knowing that my daughter would be a mere 12-weeks-old when I began the journey, it became even more important that these hours counted. So, the search began… and it was short.

I was recently asked by some friends, “Why do you do what you do?”

I always find this question a difficult one to answer, especially when I’m asked by someone who isn’t from my field. I always joke that ‘I could write a book’ about the things I’ve seen, but my answer is always about how I’m passionate about helping children.

To truly share my first impression of Wood’s Homes, I have to step back ten years. In September 2008, I was 14 years old, and I tagged along with my dad for a Day of Caring at the Parkdale Campus to re-paint the rooms in the cottages. At the time, I had no concept of what Wood’s Homes was, or the work that the agency was doing, but throughout the day I learned, quite quickly, that the experiences I had growing up were very different than the experiences of the clients.

With my backpack tight and my walking shoes on…

During EXIT Outreach’s transition to its new home in Inglewood, the EXIT team has been on the streets talking with homeless and at-risk youth. Street outreach could mean many things, depending on who you ask. It could mean handing out sandwiches or coffee. It could mean speaking about available resources or providing water on a hot day. It could mean, simply, giving somebody a hug and providing a listening ear – a brief escape from the daunting reality of life on the streets. For EXIT, street outreach embodies all of these things.

In the realm of human services, we have the simultaneous challenge and benefit of working in a field in its relative infancy.  We can look back at our foundations and see (perhaps more than most other sciences) just how far we have come in the last century. Furthermore, the subject of our science and work is constantly changing — western civilization and the people who live in it are very different from how they were even a couple of decades ago.  

I am writing today to express my deepest gratitude to all those who work so diligently to make Wood’s Homes the prestigious agency that it is.

Throughout the years, Exit Outreach has had many different homes, but the longest home we’ve had was on 7th Avenue SW. Our program moved there in 2006, and wouldn’t have been able to do so if it wasn’t for the generosity of the Central United Church and donors Norman and Valerie Van Delinder, who graciously allowed us to live rent-free for 10 years. We started in the basement of this building and worked our way up, eventually utilizing the entire space for our EXIT Community Outreach program.

As the school year comes to a close, our team thought it would be the perfect opportunity to reflect upon all of the amazing things our clients have achieved over the past nine months. From the loud and proud celebrations to the seemingly inconsequential moments, the students at the Children’s Village School (CVS) continue to amaze us with their perseverance and drive.

So often in our work with young people, we have little opportunity to see tangible changes in the clients we serve.  That’s what makes the successes so very rewarding!

Sometimes you feel compelled to write, to sort out the complex emotions that life often tasks us with.  In fact, what really matters in such hard moments is that we have learned what small thing might get us through what seems like a heavy darkness.  These are what I am thinking about tonight, after the tragic loss of life in Toronto today.  I’m thinking about finding a way to shine a light into the things that we sometimes most want to look away from.  The light isn’t about looking closer at the destruction, it’s about finding the way through.