Some volunteers doing more harm than good in Sudbury's Memorial Park, says Homelessness Network lead

Some volunteer groups working with the homeless population in Sudbury's Memorial Park could be doing more harm than good, says a longtime advocate.

Denis Constantineau is the executive director of the Centre de santé communautaire du Grand Sudbury, the lead agency of the city's Homelessness Network.

He said it's a problem when individuals with no training start doing outreach work with individuals experiencing homelessness.

"They're collecting personal information, and we have no idea how they're treating that information," Constantineau said.

He said outreach workers need to be trained in trauma-informed care. They are working with individuals who could be dealing with multiple issues.

"There's a real risk of retraumatizing people and it's really doing a disservice to the client, but also to the people, to the professionals who have been doing this work for decades," he said.

In addition, some volunteers have been bringing meals when they speak with individuals within the park, and Constantineau said that has created an unfair expectation for his organization's staff.

"Now, all of a sudden, there's an expectation that the outreach workers are going to bring warm meals, that they're going to bring everything to the client."

But he said the outreach workers' jobs are to connect the clients to appropriate services. 

Inappropriate relationships

Constantineau declined to name specific groups he found problematic, but he was especially concerned to see some volunteers engage in personal relationships with individuals who live in the Memorial Park tent encampment.

"There are some of those groups who have some of their volunteers who are dating people in Memorial Park," he said. "So they would be seen lying in the grass with them, having picnics with them."

He said that behaviour has meant personal boundaries are no longer respected in the park, and some of his staff have been accosted and even groped by individuals at that location.

"We don't even know if they have criminal record checks," he said about the volunteers working in the park.

Lack of co-ordination

Beyond the issue of untrained outreach workers, Constatineau said, all the volunteer groups working to help homeless people, even with the best of intentions, has led to a lack of co-ordination that can lead to a waste of resources, as it can be difficult to track how many meals have been delivered to the park, for example.

Constantineau's concerns were echoed in a report to the city by homelessness consultant Iain De Jong.

In his report, De Jong said untrained volunteers can sometimes do more harm than good by "greatly interfering" with efforts to provide a co-ordinated response.