Kid’s Help Phone campaign designed to improve counselling services for Aboriginal youth

Kid’s Help Phone, with the help of the Native Canadian Centre in Toronto, has created a new outreach campaign designed to improve counselling services for Aboriginal youth.

Kid’s Help Phone found that a lot of youth who were calling were from remote communities and decided it would be good to visit some Aboriginal communities and hear directly from the youth themselves.

Counsellor representatives have taken part in the Healthy Communities Project, and visited five communities in Ontario, including Serpent River, Kettle and Stoney Point, and Moose Factory, to let the youth who live in those communities speak to them about the issues they are facing.

Taking part in discussions with the youth was a way of “expanding the minds of our counsellors,” said Todd Solomon. Hearing about the issues over the phone is one thing, he said, but seeing what the communities look like is a whole different thing.

The format of each discussion in each community was slightly different from the other. For example when they visited Moose Factory, they took part in a youth conference. Solomon said the fact that each way of discussing the issues was different was appropriate, since each community is different. Counsellors also visited youth in Toronto and Thunder Bay, and Solomon considers each visit, “a big success.”

Since this campaign began, Solomon said it is hard to know for sure whether the number of Aboriginal callers has increased due to the cultural knowledge the counsellors have gained in order to better serve the Aboriginal population, but he said he does think there has been an increase.

The reason why they don’t know how many Aboriginal youth have called into Kid’s Help Phone is because of the fact that callers remain anonymous and don’t have to disclose their names or where they are calling from.
However, Solomon said there are some callers who have identified themselves as being Aboriginal.

The anonymity of the service, Solomon said, is a key and important aspect, since a lot of callers may not want to be identified. No one else will know they called in, and they can be sure issues stay confidential.

It was a great learning experience for counsellors, and if funding allows, they would like to be able to visit more communities.

“We’ve learned a whole new respect,” Solomon said of the communities, and of the youth they heard from.
Aboriginal youth who are interested in learning more about the services available to them, they can visit www.kidshelpphone.ca/aboriginal.