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Mental Wellness
Home Health Care Mental WellnessClient Advocacy
Client advocates are essential members of the client focused inter-disciplinary health professional team and provide leadership, assistance and support to individuals and families from diverse socio-economic, sexual orientation, racial, cultural, linguistic and religious backgrounds. Through a holistic (mental, physical, spiritual, emotional) approach client advocates empower and assist clients through internal and external referrals with navigation of social services and healthcare systems and information about community resources. Client advocates registered with the college of Social Work and Social Support Work provide counselling as well.
Client advocates bring their expertise in the following areas:
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Ontario Works (OW)
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Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP)
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Citizenship and Immigration Canada (refugee claimants, family sponsorships)
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Employment and Training
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Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB)
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Parenting and family relationships
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Housing
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Settlement and integration
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Public education
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Translations & cultural interpretation
Clients of North Hamilton Community Health Centre as well as special populations such as Immigrant/Refugees, individuals living with HIV/ AIDS, women and children living in shelters and seniors are eligible for services. Please call (905) 523-6611 to schedule an appointment.
Cultural Interpretation
The Cultural Interpreter Dispatch assists the Health Centre staff in effectively and efficiently serving multi-cultural clients on a daily basis by arranging on-site appointments and coordinating interpretation services for clients with language limitations. By facilitating interpretation services in more than 15 languages, the cultural interpreter dispatch serves as a bridge between multicultural clients and health-related services to ensure full access to quality care that is culturally sensitive and appropriate.
We provide services in:
| English | French | |||||||||||
| Spanish | Portuguese | |||||||||||
| Albanian | Turkish | |||||||||||
| Farsi/Dari | Italian | |||||||||||
| Somali | Arabic | |||||||||||
| Russian | Vietnamese | |||||||||||
| Karen | Bengali | |||||||||||
| Czech | ...and more. |
Social Work
Social work counseling is available to clients of the Health Centre for a variety of issues such as parenting, grief, couple counseling, self esteem, as well as accessing information about other available community resources.
Trans-Cultural Mental Wellness
A culturally competent team of psychiatrists, doctors and nurses provide on-site (direct or with the assistance of a trained interpreter), appropriate and sensitive services to members of the immigrant and refugee communities experiencing mental health issues and challenges associated to one or more of the following:
Pre-migration and Migration Stressors:
- Exposure to trauma (war, torture, terrorism, natural disasters, famine)
- Loss of immediate and extended family, and kinship networks
- Difficult and traumatic journeys (crossing rivers, capsizing rafts,
witnessing deaths) - Detention in refugee camps and risk of victimization
Post-migration Stressors:
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (depression)
- Poverty
- Culture shock
- Language barriers
- Need to support families back home; separation from immediate and extended family members
- Families live in overcrowded buildings, in inner city neighborhoods high in crime; no privacy
- Racism and Discrimination
Expressive Arts Therapy
This is a new program at the Health Centre available to all clients. The leader of Expressive Arts Therapy is a volunteer student who uses artistic media to explore and deepen the individual's relationship to his/her psychological life. The work involves a type of play and the use of the imagination. Both have been shown to lead to personal growth and deeper understanding. It may involve one or more of the following: visual arts (crayons, pastels, paint, clay, plasticine, etc) language arts (reflective writing, journaling, poetry, story-telling, etc), drama/music (story-telling, dance, movement, songs, drumming, etc).
The student volunteer works with individual clients or in group settings. An example of a session may involve asking new Canadians do draw their perception of being in Canada; they could share stories about their physical arrival and first days in Canada; foods they miss; or write five words that reflect their feelings as new Canadians which could be turned into a poem (they could work in their own language as long as there is someone to translate). They could work as a group on a paper mural of life in Hamilton. A different session may involve high school students and their reflections on how they feel about school, a mind map of their life in Hamilton, what a day at school looks like in pictures, words, actions, etc. To set up an appointment, please call (905) 523-6611.
