Executive Director of the Well Community Collective Asked For Support From County Council Last Week

by Bob Montgomery

The Executive Director of the Well Community Collective made a presentation to county council asking for support from the county.

But, Shannon McGavin made it clear they're not asking the county for money. She says they will be making a request for funding from the provincial government in the near future and in order to get that funding they will need a letter of support from Huron County.

The Well Community Collective is a not-for-profit collaborative that works with youth serving organizations from across Huron, Perth, Grey, and Bruce counties. They have a large governance table in Huron County. “We have the Huron Perth and area Ontario Health Team and the Huron Perth Centre sitting on it, we have CAS, YMCA, CMHA along with many other youth-serving organizations across Huron County and we're all working together to transform the youth service for mental health and substance use.”

McGavin says the current system is broken and does not provide the walk-in access service that young people need. Their goal is to transform the system by putting youth in the centre and then providing all of their services in a very youth-centred manner. The need is growing significantly and McGavin says right now they know that one in four youths between the ages of twelve and twenty-nine have a mental health or a substance use disorder and the numbers in Huron, Perth, Grey, and Bruce are higher than the provincial numbers. McGavin says we need those young people to be productive members of our community in the future and if we're not caring for them and showing them that their community values them, they wont stay here.

McGavin says they currently have a new site in Stratford and they'll have one in Exeter shortly and they're looking at expanding further as sites become available.