AT-A-GLANCE
Adults with disabilities and economic precarity living in the Vernon area.
Community Counselling Fund
What This Grantee Is Doing for Community Counselling
Independent Living Vernon (ILV) is a resource centre for people with various disabilities. ILV works to provide peer support programs, one on one advocacy, skill development and information and referrals to government programs and community services. ILV’s programs and services emphasize control, flexibility and choice for people with various disabilities.
The CAI Community Counselling Fund supports clinical supervision hours for their counselling team, professional development training for staff, and facilitation hours to allow for the creation of ongoing peer support groups, one on one support from a clinical counsellor, and psycho-educational support groups for people with various disabilities.
Quote
"For the clients, the Community Counselling funding has provided a consistent and unique source of support and connection for participants. One participant who took the Connections program once and the self esteem program twice,expressed interest in providing support with ongoing programs. She helped with a round of self esteem and a round of connections program to distribute materials and assist participants to get set up with the online platform. She had learned technical skills through the program and wanted to share her learning with others. This was a huge help for the facilitator and really assisted participants to feel confident in taking an online program. The Community Counselling funding has been an immense support for our organization and RSWs. Many of the RSWs have been with the organization for a long time and identified they felt their practice was limited and behind the times. The funding to provide supervision has created incredible impacts for staff. For example, through our discussions and learning we have done in supervision, one of our RSWs has applied for a Masters program through UVIC and been accepted. Another RSW is working to apply for a PhD program in Social Work. In the meantime she has been able to share her learning with the supervision group."