Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul Community Impact Fund

The Frontenac-Kingston Council on Aging (COA), in close collaboration with community partners, is establishing an Older Adults Hub at Providence Village to deliver free, inclusive programming for older adults. This space will improve programming accessibility, reduce isolation, improve well-being, and strengthen service delivery through consistent programming, outreach, and community engagement.

Rural Frontenac Community Services, in partnership with local organizations, is launching Canada’s first pilot of the Tellegacy program to reduce social isolation among older adults in Rural Frontenac. This structured, evidence-based initiative pairs volunteers with older adults for eight weeks of guided conversations focused on life stories, legacy-building, and connection. The program is designed to be flexible and responsive to local needs, with potential for expansion or adaptation based on community feedback.

This initiative aims to create a collaborative approach to supporting families to build on their strengths and foster protective factors, improving educational and health outcomes for students experiencing significant, complex and ongoing behavioural and social-emotional challenges at school. Plans of care for students and their families will include clinical interventions, social prescribing strategies and educational support, with follow-up wrap around case conferences, support and monitoring by both educational and medical partners. 

The Exercise, Education, and Social Time initiative is a rural health promotion project, leveraging partnerships across the health and social service sectors, that will deliver two evidence based wellness programs to older adults in underserved rural communities in the KFL&A region. These programs are designed to improve balance, mobility, strength, and bone health, while reducing falls, fractures, and the impacts of chronic disease. Sessions offer facilitated social opportunities alongside education and referrals to health and community services that combat isolation and support well-being.

HIPPY is an evidenced-based home visiting program that supports parents and young children with school readiness and social integration. The program is designed for the specific needs and cultural contexts of immigrant/refugee, low income and Indigenous families. Through a peer-support model, HIPPY strengthens families and communities by breaking isolation, helping to support parents as their child’s first teacher, and by bringing support into the home for families who cannot or do not access existing programs and services. 

This initiative is focused on reducing social isolation and fostering belonging among older adults by providing accessible, low barrier-to-entry social connection options via Talking Cafes, generating touchstone moments for social connection as well as knowledge mobilization and referrals for other community services and resources. The goal is to act locally to improve health and wellbeing by increasing social connectedness, developing a replicable model that others can adopt and expand.

I-CREAte is a community-based participatory action research initiative that conducts meaningful and action oriented research to improve the health and well-being of children, families, and communities in Kingston and the surrounding region. The funding will support I-CREAte to collaborate with the Adverse Childhood Experiences and Resilience Coalition of KFL&A (ARC) to expand capacity for multidisciplinary community based research supporting children and families experiencing ACEs within KFL&A, including building a hub for research and evaluation for ARC and partner organizations’ projects.

Created in consultation with the community it would serve, A Great Start for Families Kahwà:tsire Ronwatiyenawá:se Centre opened its doors in October, 2022. Offering families better service coordination and navigation has created a ‘one door knock’ for services, including childcare, and helps reduce barriers to accessing services, ultimately preventing escalation of need. This funding builds on this strong foundation, helping to introduce more early relational programming, expanding the hub model to reach more families, and ultimately developing a collaborative, efficient system with a focus on primary prevention, early intervention and support.

In October of 2023 Kingston Community Health Centres, Teach Resilience and the ACEs & Resilience Coalition of KFL&A (ARC) came together to host the KFL&A Resilience Symposium: Navigating Adversity Through the Power of Community. Over 3 days, over 450 people engaged in 10 events at 6 locations, bringing together community champions, educators, decision makers, and those interested in building a more resilient KFL&A to chart a course of systemic community change.

The goal of “Becoming Trauma Responsive,” was to position Pathways Kingston, as well as the KFL&A in general, as leaders in providing coordinated trauma responsive care to children and youth. With the understanding that there were no local resources or trainings available to youth-serving organizations in KFL&A, the Trauma-Responsive Team Leads, or “TRTLs”, came together to build local capacity for low cost, local, trauma-responsive coaching. Through this grant, the TRTLs earned trauma-responsive trainer certification from the Community Resilience Initiative (CRI). The TRTLs then trained over 2000 local participants in CRI’s certificate courses, which offer foundational background information on ACEs and brain science, as well as practical strategies for approaching a variety of situations with children and youth in a trauma-responsive way.