Meet Our Teams
SHELTER TEAM
Our Shelter Team welcomes new families to Christie Refugee Welcome Centre. Families eligible to seek shelter at Christie are refugee claimant families who have arrived to Canada within the last six months and have no place to stay upon their arrival to Toronto. In partnership with the City of Toronto, our 76 bed program can support up to 30 families at any given time.
In a family’s first few days at Christie, our Shelter Team orients families to their new living environments. We guide families through their refugee claim process, help register children and adults for school and English classes, and connect families to healthcare services, recreation programs, financial assistance and more. After a few weeks, our Shelter Team will begin supporting families with their housing search, offering financial literacy orientations and intensively helping families find and secure permanent housing.
Services Provided
Moving in and orientation to Christie
Support with Refugee Claim
Connect to Health Services
Connect to Schools
Connect to Financial Assistance
Housing Orientation
Moving out to new community
While living at Christie, families will have access to several helpful on-site programs and services.
An on-site kitchen provides families with access to healthy meals, packed lunches and snacks throughout the day. A robust basic needs program allows Christie’s Shelter Team to provide families with personal care products, hygiene items, transportation funds and other basic needs items until families are in receipt of social assistance funds of their own.
For women living at Christie, an on-site Women’s Program is offered twice per year. Our Women’s Wellness Program is a six-week series of health and well-being workshops for women covering topics including parenting, art therapy, nutrition and healthy eating and stress management.
In addition to shelter, food, basic needs and continuous staff follow-up with a family’s various settlement needs, families also have access to a number of on-site specialized programs including our on-site After-School Children’s Program. Our After-School Children’s Program for 6-12 year olds teaches literacy, music, fitness, and science/math/engineering concepts. For these school-aged children, Christie also offers on-site, full-day summer and March Break Day Camps.
All residents of Christie have access to Christie’s on-site health clinic, staffed by four doctors and two nurses (four days per week!) providing immediate primary care, vaccinations, and preventative health initiatives.
Our Shelter Team also offers regular educational workshops in budgeting, financial literacy, and strategies for a successful housing search to residents. Our Shelter Team hosts a variety of seasonal events for families living at Christie to better foster community amongst residents and staff. Events include International Women’s Day, Canada Day, Back-to-School BBQs, Multicultural Nights, and holiday celebrations.
Outreach Team
Our Outreach Team provides ongoing settlement support to the refugee families of Christie Refugee Welcome Centre who move out of the Centre and may continue to require follow-up settlement support once living independently in the community.
Developed in 2006 in response to the identified need for ongoing settlement support for shelter families as they transitioned from living at Christie into their own housing, the Outreach team helps families with advocacy and referrals, navigating new public systems, filling out forms, and most frequently – troubleshooting emergency housing, legal and financial situations as they arise.
In 2023, our Outreach team helped a record 195 former Christie residents file their taxes. They also worked tirelessly to connect dozens of refugee claimant families with a family doctor and supported over 100 families with basic needs, grocery gift cards, registering for informational workshops, renewing daycare subsidies, housing subsidies, and making Legal Aid referrals. Most frequently, the team assists families with navigating new social service applications, processes and programs that they may have not encountered while living in shelter.
Our Outreach Team also runs an Employment Program for our current residents and former residents who are now living in the community.
Outreach's employment program addresses the pivotal role employment plays within the settlement process for refugees, especially refugee claimants who are often excluded from federally-funded employment programs for newcomers. The Outreach employment program is specifically designed for refugee claimants and offers 1-on-1 employment counselling, workshops, resume writing support, career research, job search support, referrals to employment and training programs, and other job search assistance.
50 clients have been referred to the Outreach employment program since April 2024. More than 30 percent of referred clients have found full time or part time employment and most others are connected to skills development training.
2023 STATISTICS
132
# of new clients served in 2023
55
Welcome Packages provided
325
# of total consultations provided (in-person, email, virtual, telephone)
100%
% of all new Outreach clients who remained in permanent, independent housing
Centre for Refugee Children
Some refugee children and youth arrive to Canada on their own. In an unfamiliar country, without their parents, they are expected to navigate the refugee claim process alone.
In 2021, the Centre for Refugee Children was founded, as an initiative between CRWC and the FCJ Refugee Centre, to provide direct settlement services to these unaccompanied and separated refugee children. The Centre for Refugee Children consists of settlement workers and housing workers who provide unaccompanied refugee children with needed immigration, education, legal, shelter, and financial support and referrals. Policy staff advocate for an immigration and settlement landscape where children’s rights are upheld, their voices are heard, and their needs are met.
The Centre for Refugee Children also operates a Child Representative Program, an initiative which trains qualified settlement workers and legal professionals to be able to support unaccompanied refugee children through their legal immigration proceedings.
If you are a child or family in need of assistance or would like more information about the Centre for Refugee Children, visit crcrefugee.ca.
Centre for Refugee Children Staff Team
The Centre for Refugee Children's Youth Leadership Council, which advises the work of the CRC.
