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New home, same old challenges and

by Michael Kelly

Carol Sabo sits in her bright new
office, surrounded and nearly
overwhelmed by encroaching
papers, reports, grant applications,
references and all the other written
and printed icons of a community
social services agency. K’san
House Society has a new home,
and’ the people who work for the
agency are just getting a settled
balance after having to move and
keep programs in order at the same
time.

They’ve taken over the old prov-
incial police building at Kalum and
Lakelse, a prominent location in a
building that has seen, if not better
days, then more structurally sound
days. It has a new coat of paint,
the interior is spruced up and
redesigned, but the asphalt shingle
roof has grown a substantial crop
of moss and needs work. As we sit
down for an interview Joe Young,
a local carpenter, arrives and takes

_@ look at it. The decking is rotted

in places: under the shingles.
Young takes measurements in
preparation for working up an
estimate. It sounds expensive.

Sabo, K’san’s executive director,
says they've taken a five-year
lease on the place, Although it’s
old, the new location has allowed
the society to consolidate adminis-
tration of its three programs — the
Osborne House, the Terrace Tran-
sition House, and the Terrace
Sexual Assault Centre — under
one soon-to-be-repaired roof.

Although the improved organiza-
tion is a relief, running the pro-
grams on an increasingly stingy
government funding base becomes
more of a challenge with each
passing year.

The Osborne House is a tempor-
ary shelter for mentally ill people

_ who are trying to live independent

lives in Terrace. The shelter is
there for those who have occa-
sional problems coping with the
stress of independence. Sabo says
the Program for Independent Liv-
ing being run out of Osborne has
been deemed a success and bran-
dishes a funding grant confirma-
tion from brewery giant John
Labatt Ltd. that will allow the
program to hire a summer student.
One of Osborne’s clients, she

notes, got a job through the pro-—

gram and has held it down for
several months — a client that

hadn’t been able to cope with any

form of paid employment for the
previous five years.

Osborne residents did most of the
dirty work necessary to make the
new office habitable, and summer
students secured through the Em-
ployment Plus Program did the
finishing work. It will take some-
thing more than casual labour and
determination to do the work that’s

more for K’san

‘needed on the Osborne House
itself, however. Sabo says a per-
sistent water problem in the base-
ment of the old house is reaching
crisis proportions: plank walkways
have been laid down as the only:
way to move around in it.

Sabo thinks Osborne will get a
grant for labour to deal with part
of the problem in the fall from the
Canada Employment Centre, but
the repairs are going to take more
than that. .

Sabo notes with a puzzled snort
the city’s continued refusal to
grant a tax exemption to Osborne,
which is a facility licensed under
the Mental Health Act. This year
the tax bill is $1,693, but city
council’s logic is that the tax bill
is taken into account under Os-
borne’s operating grant from the
Ministry of Health.

The Sexual Assault Centre has
moved its entire operation into the

old police building. The quarters
are brighter and more cheerful than

the previous suite of offices in the
Tolsec building, but again funding
shortages plague the operation. —

The core funding for the Sexual
Assault Centre, paid out by the
B.C. Attorney General, has
remained static for the past three
years while costs have risen. One
stafE member is being cut back
from 35 hours a week to 20 and
the travel budget — the Terrace
centre is supposed to serve nearly
all the Northwest — has virtually
disappeared under the erosion of
cost increases.

"We've had repeated requests
from all the communities up here
for workshops, seminars and
counselling. There’s a huge
demand, especially for speakers on

‘family violence. There just isn’t

enough money for it," Sabo says.

She’s looking for ways to cut
costs, but there’s almost nothing
left to cut. "We may have to set a
time limit on the length of
counselling, just to be able to
handle the crisis people." Every
year for the Sexual Assault Centre
the number of open files grows;
once a file is opened, the client
may require years of counselling to
cope with the trauma of assault.
Many new files are opened each
year, few of the old ones are
closed,

"We can’t do everything we did
before, which still wasn "t enough,”
she says.

To compensate for the damage
inflation has inflicted on K’san’s
core funding, the society is being
forced to float its programs on
one-shot grants for specific pro-
jects. Each of the grants has to be
pursued relentlessty-and wrenched
out of the funding agency.

Scanning stacks of grant applica-
tion forms and their accompanying
descriptions of qualifications, Sabo

Carol Sabo, in the new counselling room for the Sexual Assault Centre: Clients numbers
going up, budget erosions cutting staff hours.

reflects ruefully, "My job shouldn’t
even be necessary."

The new location seems to have
given the society and its programs
a higher profile, and quickly. “It
must be doing something," Sabo
says. "We've had eight or 10 new
clients this week. They just walked
in off the street."

Grant helps Osborne

Contributed by
Carol Sabo

K’san House Society, through the
Osborne Residential Program, has
received a grant from John La-

Red Cross back for blood

The Canadian Red Cross Society
will hold their annual Terrace area
blood donor clinic on July 10 in
the Skeena Junior Secondary
School gymnasium.

Seven hundred units of blood
must be collected from volunteer
donors cach business day to meet
the needs of British Columbians.
No one is paid for donating blood
and no Canadian is charged for
receiving blood. To donate blood,
you must be in good health, weigh
at least 100 Ibs. and be at least 17
years old; you may donate until
your 7ist birthday, if you are a
repeat donor. The age limit for
first-time donors is 60 years of
age.

For the protection of both donors
and recipients, cach donor is
screened by the nursing staff prior

to donating. Extensive laboratory
tests antibodies, AIDS, hepatitis,
jaundice and syphilis are per-
formed on each unit of blood
collected.

An average adult person, depend-
ing on body weight, has about 12
pints. A unit of blood (450
ml) requires approximately seven
to 10 minutes to donate. Donors
are advised to allow at least 50
minutes to complete the process,
from registration to refreshments.

It is recommended that donors
refrain from strenuous exercise for
six to eight hours following dona-
tion, and donors should not smoke
for at least an hour after giving
blood.

The blood donor clinic in Terrace
will take place from 2 - 8 p.m. on

Wednesday, July 10.

batt’s Ltd, 1991 "People in Action"
program. Melanie Goodlad, a
student of Camosun College in
Victoria, has been hired as a com-
munity liaison worker.

Melanie will be working with
psychiatrically disabled adults
living within the community, as~
sisting them in enhancing their
quality of life.

One of the first events for Mel-
anic is a week at Kin Kamp with
the clients at Osborne and Inde-
pendent Living residents. On their
return they will be hosting a gar-
age sale July 6 to raise money for
summer events. Any and all dona-
tions for this sale will be greatly
appreciated and can be dropped off
at 2812 Hall St. For further infor-
mation Melanie can be reached at
635-2171 or 635-2373.

The Labatt’s "People in Action"
program was initiated by John
Labatt Limited, the Canadian food
atid beverage corporation, 10 years
ago-and provides funds to non-
profit organizations across Canada
to hire post-secondary students for
hands-on, career-related summer
employment,