THUNDER BAY — The Care Bus reached nearly 10,000 people in its 2024/2025 season in Thunder Bay.
The Care Bus is operated by NorWest Community Health Centres in partnership with the Thunder Bay Indigenous Friendship Centre and the Ontario Native Women's Association's Mindimooyenh Health Clinic.
The Care Bus began three weeks early, on December 2, 2024 and ran until April 18.
“The Care bus was initiated through Covid with a call for action with regards to individuals who are unhoused in the community and having many difficulties accessing services,” Juanita Lawson, chief executive officer of NorWest Community Health Centres.
An increase was seen for individuals connected to meals with 1,363 in the 2023/2024 season and 2,039 people connected this past season, Lawson said.
“One of the things that we saw is people's need for hospitalization. While our Care Bus staff offered therapeutic listening and basic first aid, cold weather responses and wound care kits, we also saw an increase in people needing to go to the emergency department. In the 2023/2024 season there was 11 people that were brought to hospital and this year we saw 89 people.
“I think that that speaks to the need for people's care in the community and access to health care. Also, the complexity of needs that people are presenting, because they might not have been connected to care or have experienced difficult situations, where they might not go back to a facility or an organization if they haven't had a good experience. I think there's lots of things that we continue to learn from the clients that use the service.”
The cold weather emergency response plan was something the Care Bus did this past year that was necessary, Lawson said.
“That one was looking at when we had temperatures below 25 degrees, that the cold weather response plan would be implemented, which means longer hours of services were provided.
“We operated the Care Bus 26 days extra this past winter, and with that we did see a very significant increase in the utilization of the Care Bus and that the need for people to be connected to meals, to be referred to hospitals or detox centres or to get to health care appointments or social service or primary health care appointments or shelter.
“We also saw a lot of need for individuals on the bus to just really be connected with others, to have therapeutic conversations about what people needed to navigate the system,” she said.
Lawson said the Care Bus almost reached 10,000 people this year.
“With 9,586 people interreacting with our Care bus staff, many of our clients said, I know this is a safe place for me to stay warm, to feel safe, to receive food and to develop relationships, but a lot of them also talked about how they didn't have money for the care, they didn't have money for bus fare and so the Care Bus allowed them to get to Dew Drop for a hot meal or go to the pharmacy to talk about their medications or go to a walk-in clinic, so I think we just heard from a lot of people that it's very difficult.”
The Care Bus allowed clients to take care of themselves in many ways, and the team is proud of the work done, Lawson said.
“NorWest, with many partners such as Grace Place, People Advocating for Change Through Empowerment or the Thunder Bay District Health Unit, and with ONWA, had a number of pop-up clinics that we offered wrap around services. People could come for a meal, they could get their hair cut, they could complete ID, they could have their feet assessed,” she said.
Lawson said the Care Bus has been a really good service and something that the team wants to continue to expand upon and improve over the next couple of years.
The Care Bus was also operating during the provincial election, Lawson said.
“We used that opportunity to engage people and talk about civic engagement and about their right to vote and to connect people with polling stations.
“I think that was a really good opportunity to leverage those connections with people and talk about democracy and those type of things.”
