Covenant House Vancouver

Last night was my first experience doing outreach with Covenant House. I work in the Development and Communications department as a Donations Administrator so I don't really get to see all the front line stuff.

We started out by visiting a few of our youth at St.Paul's Hospital in the mental health ward. One young gentleman brought out his art portfolio that he has been working on, and proudly showed us his latest sketches. It was also a joy to see his face light up at the thought of displaying a few of his pieces in the art room at Pender. I got to sit with this young man and one of our outreach workers and witness the rapport between the two. The youth worker interacted extremely well with the youth and knew the exact questions to ask him and how to respond. The youth seemed very comfortable telling us about himself, his past, his illness and his plans for the future.

Next we went to visit a youth who recently left our shelter and is now living in an apartment and doing quite well. He was very happy to see us and told us all about his day and about the support groups he was attending. It was great to hear him say such nice things about Covenant House and about how much we helped him when he was staying in our shelter. He even has a picture of the Covenant House sign on his front door so that every time he leaves his home he thinks of us and all the things we did to help him.

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I have attached an article on disordered eating for everyone. In some way, shape or form regardless of what department you work in, we are all affected by disordered eating here at Covenant House. For the last year this has been a fairly hot topic so when I read this article I thought many of you might appreciate it.

Often the focus is on how little or how much a person is eating. Therapeutically this is not where the focus lies and it sometimes is confusing when quantity is not the primary focus for a client who has disordered eating. This article defines all the various eating disorders, the concerns and causes and it explains the process of healing.

I encourage you all to have a read and if you have any questions or feedback please feel free to leave a comment.

Cheers,

Tracy

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