Donations to ShareLife have allowed Catholic Family Services Toronto to operate two walk-in clinics, which opened last September, for those in need of counselling on anything from marriage problems to personal re-lationship problems and even mild depression or loneliness.
“(The ShareLife donations) gave us a window of opportunity that we seized well and we seized quickly,” said Denis Costello, Catholic Family Services’ director of clinic programs and services. “We’ve been keen to do this for a while. It is nice to get the oppor-tunity and the funding to do this.”
Currently the two clinics, one located at Yonge Street and Finch Avenue and the other on the main floor of the Archdiocese of Toronto’s Catholic Pastoral Centre in midtown Toronto, are functioning as single-session booking clinics. That means rather than simply walking in off the street one must call in advance to book an appointment. They are doing this to clear up a backlog of people waiting on lists for ongoing treatment, many of whom only need a session or two.
“A lot of people are well served in a brief or even single session,” said Costello. “About 50 per cent of our clients are served in three or less sessions.”
One of the advantages to the walk-in clinic is that the counsel-lors are able to quickly provide as-sistance on a wide range of topics. But that doesn’t mean those needing more serious help cannot seek assistance from the clinics.
“The advantage to walk-in is you can go with anything,” he said. “A lot of our work is doing good referrals. We can’t change your life but we can help you adapt to it.”
Costello said the service, which hosts about 50 sessions a month, has helped reduce wait times to about four weeks for Catholic Family Services’ ongoing services. Before the walk-in clinic it wasn’t rare for someone to wait an entire year before getting help, he said.
“ShareLife money enables families and individuals and couples to live a better life,” said Costello.
And that’s why once again ShareLife, the charitable fund-raising arm of the Archdiocese of Toronto, is seeking support to reach its $12.65 million parish campaign, which launched in late March. The parish campaign makes up the bulk of ShareLife’s overall goal of raising $15 million.
“As a Catholic community one of our core values is that we extend the hands of Christ to help others and we do that in our churches in many ways,” said Arthur Peters, ShareLife’s executive director. “ShareLife is the annual appeal of the archdiocese of course and that is one of the primary ways that we can help others.”
In addition to reaching out to parishioners in the pews, ShareLife is looking to raise $1.35 million and $170,000 through its corporate and school campaigns respectively. An additional $260,000 is sought through the employee payroll deduction campaign with the remaining amount to be gathered from investments, the legacy of life program and miscellaneous injec-tions of cash.
Although Peters admits “it is a tough world out there right now,” he is optimistic about reaching these goals.
“I believe the Catholic community will respond to the needs of ShareLife’s social service agencies and all of our agencies as they have done in the past,” said Peters.
Catholic Family Services Toronto is but one of the 43 agencies that received funding from ShareLife last year and for that they are grateful, said Costello.
“It is a gift of the Catholic Church to the total community,” he said. “We see everybody no matter what your religion or lack of religion. As a Catholic I am really proud that we offer this as a gift to the total community of Toronto. ShareLife allows us to do that.”