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York Region agency opens satellite to support Simcoe newcomers

Catholic Community Services of York Region has opened the first satellite office in its 43-year history in Norfolk County to meet the growing need from newcomers there
ccsyr-simcoe-satellite
The Catholic Community Services of York Region satellite office in Simcoe caters to migrant farm workers, international students, refugees and other newcomers. Settlement navigator Leanne Arnal (centre) runs the office, with help from executive director Leonilda Patey (right) and co-op student Adrian Lopez.

One of Canada’s leading settlement services agencies has set up shop in Simcoe.

Catholic Community Services of York Region (CCSYR) opened the first satellite office in the organization’s 43-year history in Norfolk County in January — a response, says executive director Leonilda Patey, to growing need from newcomers to the region.

Norfolk welcomes some 6,000 migrant farm workers from Mexico and the Caribbean each year, and Fanshawe College’s Simcoe campus has a healthy contingent of international students.

Add in refugees and immigrants  landing in the rural county, and CCSYR decided to rent office space on  Queensway West to offer in-person and online counselling and settlement  services.

“Understanding  the need out here, it was important to make the investment,” Patey said during a recent visit to the office, where clients can do  online research, attend seminars on health, labour rights and financial  literacy, and take English classes.

“We  have people from Afghanistan, Thailand, Mexico who are learning to speak English,” said Leanne Arnal, a settlement navigator who runs the  office as its sole permanent employee.

The  office offers English classes for farm workers from Mexico, and Arnal is organizing a course in conversational Spanish for farmers and human  resources managers “so they can better communicate with their workers.”

CCSYR is not the only agency in Norfolk helping farm workers navigate the  legal and health-care systems, but Arnal said there is enough demand  from newcomers to warrant numerous organizations being active.

“I think to service the amount of people we have here, absolutely, there’s a need,” she said.

The CCSYR office is open Monday  and Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Wednesday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., with two conversational English classes each evening.

Officially,  Arnal estimates the office serves close to 100 people each week. But  the longtime migrant worker advocate says she fields calls and WhatsApp messages at all hours of the day.

“I operate morning to night, six or seven days a week,” she said. “There’s always people who need something.”

The calls can be as simple as finding a new coat for a worker or arranging a  ride into town. Sometimes, Arnal is called upon to mediate disputes between workers and farmers or advise workers experiencing mistreatment or abuse.

Patey credited Arnal for forging relationships with farmers and farm workers alike.

“It’s that connection piece that makes this work. Because you can’t have one without the other,” Patey said.

Helping students 

The satellite office is a destination for international students, many of  whom land in Canada with little knowledge of their new home.

Adrian Lopez was at a loss when he got to Simcoe early last year to study social service work at Fanshawe.

Lacking transportation, he spent hours walking around town to buy groceries.

After months of fruitlessly searching for an apartment, the Mexican student found a bed in a house with 10 roommates from India.

“I have had many problems with  them. We are from different cultures,” said Lopez, who feels hamstrung  by the high cost of rent and paucity of vacant units.

“So I had to get used to the place,” he said.

Watching some of his classmates break down under the strain of living away from  home underscored the need for more mental health counselling for  international students.

“Some people have good resilience, but not all of them,” Lopez said.

“Some  people, after two or three months, they are crying. They miss family,  they miss friends. Things happen around them and they don’t know what to do.”

Lopez was a physiotherapist in Mexico before leaving for Canada “to find some  opportunities” at better-paying work and to learn English. He came to  the CCSYR office for help finding a job and ended up getting hired by  the agency as a co-op student in May.

International students are capped at working 20 hours a week, which makes getting hired a challenge, Lopez explained.

“As international students, we sometimes need support to find a job,” he  said. “Because when we come here, we don’t know how to do it.”

Lopez has made inroads with the men and women from Mexico working on area farms, helping one worker enrol in Spanish-language mental health  counselling offered by CCSYR.

Making an impact

Six months into a year-long pilot project, Arnal said the number of people  using the CCSYR satellite office is “supportive of the fact that we need  to keep doing this every day.”

“And then we also need to be able to demonstrate the impact we’re having in the community,” Patey said.

“So it’s not just the numbers. It’s how successful are people as a result of the interaction.”

To learn more about the services offered at CCSYR’s Simcoe office, call 519-277-1102 or 1-800-263-2075 or email [email protected].

J.P. Antonacci is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter at The Hamilton Spectator

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