Sharon Mayne, CEO, Catholic Family Services Peel Dufferin
What is your favourite thing about Catholic Family Services of Peel Dufferin?
The mission of the organization is to strengthen and enrich individual, family and community life. Everything we do, in some way, is about building resilience and enhancing people’s lives. We provide services that run along an entire continuum of early intervention and prevention to crisis response, and healing from trauma. The agency provides psychotherapy, counseling and group support, system navigation, and community outreach and education.
What’s your favorite thing about the services that the organization provides?
We make a significant difference in the lives of the people who come here. In the fall, I was feeling particularly discouraged about the waitlist for services. I just, by happenstance, met a woman for a mentorship meeting. She said, ‘I used to be a client (at Catholic Family Services Peel-Dufferin), and this organization saved my life. I came here set to kill myself, but my grandmother insisted I come here, and so I did. I spoke with a counselor, and she believed me.’ Now this woman wants to become a therapist herself. That happens over and over again. I sit here on days when we do the walk-in counseling clinic, and I see people in the waiting room staring at their feet, looking defeated. Then, later, I watched them leave with their heads held high, smiling, watching their kids skip along, seeing their ability to respond differently to them,, just after that one hour meeting with that counselor or therapist. That is my favorite part of the job. That’s why I’m here.
What’s one thing you love doing every day?
I get to work with extraordinary people. There are big issues that we’re up against in this community, and we know we don’t have enough resources to respond to all the needs that come our way. We know that. But to be in a position to make a real impact with those that we are able to serve is no small thing. While we can’t help everyone, because we just don’t have the capacity – for those lives that we do touch, we make a big difference.
Can you give us a snapshot of one of your clients to help paint a picture of the sector?
It’s very difficult for me to say to you, this is the profile of the person who comes here. It’s anyone who needs to speak to a councillor, anybody who needs to speak to anybody about anything comes here. If you look at the demographics of Peel, that’s who comes here. I know it gets confusing, because people think, oh, Catholic family services. Yes, we serve the Catholic community, and we serve the whole community. When I started here 12 years ago, 52% of the people we served were Catholic. Today, 30% of the people we serve are Catholic. But if you look at the changing demographics of Peel it maps on to the demographics of those who come here for services. We serve the community in 12 different languages. It’s very hard to say who’s your typical client in Peel Region. There is no typical client.
The same is true at the Safe Centre, we’re seeing women fleeing violence who need support from many different services, risk assessments, safety planning, emergency shelter, legal support… Men also come for services, though most who come are women in Mississauga and Brampton. No one is turned away.
What is something that would surprise people about your organization?
Most of the people who work here are not Catholic. Our staff and board reflect the diversity of the community we serve.
What’s one thing that could help your work with the Safe Centre?
We need a central line for VAW emergency shelters. There’s only 4 emergency shelters in this entire region: Embrave Agency to End Violence, the Women & Children Precious Shelter, The Salvation Army Family Life Resource Centre, and Sakeenah homes. There is also a shelter in Orangeville, Family Transition Place. So when a woman is in need of crisis shelter because they’re fleeing violence the phone calls begin. You start with the Salvation Army, then you call over to Embrave, then you’ll call over to Precious shelter, then you’ll call up to Orangeville. If all of those are, “sorry, we’re over capacity”‘ then you’ll call Halton, then you’ll call into Toronto.
How long does it take to find a shelter bed for a woman escaping violence?
Hours. We need a central number that keeps track of bed availability. Part of that is an infrastructure issue. Can we begin by starting something at least in Peel, where we can have one number that we’re calling so we know where the beds are, and when they’re opening up on any given day, so that women know? Another issue is that women should not be staying at the shelter for longer than three months, but sometimes, because there’s no affordable housing, she stays longer. So all of the system has to link up.
What brought you to this work and what sustains you?
My whole life has been about making change. I came to this as a social worker and a couple and family therapist. I’ve worked with a lot of individuals, couples, and families. I taught for 13 years at the University of Guelph, and when I taught most of the students were women, so it’s about changing the world. I think my despair today is that the conditions of people’s lives are worse now than they were when I started as a social worker 40 years ago. In some ways, things are much better. We’re much more sophisticated in our understanding of problems and we do better service delivery. When I did my social work training in the early 80s, we weren’t talking about intimate partner violence, human sex trafficking, sexual assault, diversity, equity and inclusion. Everybody in the program was white. We’ve come so far and we’re so much more progressive. I’ve been part of a movement of creating change. Even in teaching, it was about helping people begin to think critically, because if we don’t have an analysis, then we can’t be change makers. We all have a responsibility around making change, I think.
How does metamorphosis fit into that?
It’s a way to be able to galvanize a focus across the sectors to have greater impact. Because when we’re fragmented, it’s a lot harder to make change than when we are unified and come together. Intimate partner violence, historically, was a feminist issue. It was a group of women who themselves were being abused, who had no place to go and said, ‘Enough of this. We’re going to do something about this problem. It’s not our fault we’re being abused.’ And that’s how the shelter movement started. It was people who’ve been abused themselves who took it upon themselves to start a movement to say enough is enough. And it was grassroots feminists who did all this work. My mentors in the 1980s weren’t afraid to take risks and speak up. I hope Metamorphosis, across all of the partner agencies, will, together, help move the needle when it comes to intimate partner violence in Peel by working with government partners, elected representatives, and with the community as a whole. We need to galvanize and bring people together. Metamorphosis has the potential to be an incredible enabler but we can’t do it without, one another and, more importantly, the community, to help drive change.
