Why putting social workers in public libraries could help Montrealers in crisis

Since Roxann Fournier-Hoyt started her career as a librarian two years ago, she has played the role of literary matchmaker, connecting readers with the right novel. But she has also been helping visitors in other ways. 

One morning, a few weeks ago, a man came in asking for help finding an apartment. On another day, a woman inquired about a list of local shelters. Other times, it's a more mundane request like help with filing tax returns.

"I want to help, but all I have are books," said Fournier-Hoyt, who works at the Atwater Library and Computer Centre, a registered charity run mostly by volunteers.

Straddled between the Resilience Montreal homeless shelter and the YMCA Residence — which provides asylum seekers and refugees with short-term housing — the Atwater Library regularly has people coming through its doors looking for help. 

Librarians are shouldering more responsibilities to fill the gaps of eroding social services, says Fournier-Hoyt. 

"Libraries are one of the last places that you can get help for free," she said.

"Even though it's not really within our mission to do that, we're all of the personality type that, 'Goddammit, I'm going to help you anyway,'" she said. 

To respond to the changing needs of their communities, a growing number of public libraries across Canada have started hiring social workers. Now, some librarians in Montreal want their city to follow suit.

Retooling to respond to crises

It would not be a first for Quebec.

Facing what it calls an "unprecedented housing crisis" and "mental distress from COVID-19," the City of Drummondville, about 100 kilometres northeast of Montreal, hired a social worker in 2021 to work in ther library.

Between October 2021 and June 2022 alone, they made over 400 interventions focusing on psychosocial support in emergency situations, according to the city.

The public library is a microcosm of society, says Eve Lagacé, general director of Quebec's association of public libraries. In recent years, she has heard a growing number of reports about incidents across the province.

The complaints range from drug use to verbal abuse and sometime physical violence directed at librarians, she says. 

She says she's had to intervene in a variety of situations: a mother with postpartum depression posing a danger to her baby, a mourner in a mental health crisis. 

But the impact of a social worker goes beyond responding to emergency situations. 

The Drummondville model has shown the benefits of preventive action by building and maintaining links with vulnerable people in the community, she says.

Through libraries, social workers could support those with mental health or substance abuse issues, administer naloxone in cases of overdose and direct people to places to get food aid or clothing, says Lagacé, adding that many people who already come to use free computer services are under the poverty line.

The Drummondville Public Library is now a safer place for both its employees and the public, Anne-Élisabeth Benjamin, communications officer with the city of Drummondville, told CBC in an email. 

Aside from offering food, warm clothing, hygiene products and sleeping bags, the library has provided assistance to those dealing with eviction, substance abuse, abortions and bereavement.

Due to the project's success, Drummondville regularly receives calls from other municipalities across the province, said Benjamin.

But it is far from the only library in Canada to take this approach.

Outside the province, public libraries in Winnipeg, Edmonton and Yellowknife have all hired social workers in recent years, while in June, Ottawa city staff called for social workers to join their ranks to curb a marked rise in safety incidents in the city's libraries.

Montreal's move?

Marc-André Huot has seen the role of the public library evolve.

"For the last 20 years, we have had more and more impact in the community, and we offer different services to help the community," said Huot, who manages the Parc-Extension Public Library, one of the city's 45 municipal libraries.

Holding budget meal workshops and helping people with immigration paperwork has become part of the library's vocation, he says, and adding a social worker would be one way of addressing the issues people in the neighbourhood are facing, he said.

"One social worker is not the solution," said Huot. "We have to offer different kinds of solutions. That's what we already do, and we adjust with time."

In the eastern edge of downtown Montreal, Quebec's Grande Bibliothèque in Montreal sits on the doorstep of Émilie-Gamelin Park, the largest greenspace in the area where people experiencing homelessness gather.

Mathieu Thuot-Dubé, the library's director of educational services and cultural action, told CBC that, according to its partners in local community organizations, the number of unhoused people in the area has grown since the pandemic. 

The Grande Bibliothèque's current strategy is to work with community organizations to provide services and activities for vulnerable people, but he says the library is exploring the idea of taking on a social worker in the future. 

CBC asked the City of Montreal if the public libraries in its network would opt to follow the Drummondville model. 

In a statement, the city said it does not record the number of incidents in libraries because they are rare.

Some boroughs employ liaison workers, who work with new arrivals to find jobs and sign up for French-language courses, while other boroughs deploy a social intervention and mediation group, Équipe mobile de médiation et d'intervention sociale (ÉMMIS), to respond to situations involving vulnerable people in distress, a city spokesperson said. 

The City of Montreal declined an interview request with ÉMMIS about interventions in libraries.