The Canadian Mental Health Association Waterloo Wellington (CMHA WW) announced on February 23 that it will launch a youth mental health and support services site in Fergus, a community northwest of Guelph.

Encompassing 6,000 square feet, site is slated to open in June. It will pilot CMHA WW’s Integrated Youth Services Network (IYSN) project, which will see a total of seven sites developed across the county.

Each site will provide services such as mental health and addiction counselling, employment support, and peer-to-peer programs for youth aged 12 to 26.

“Young people have been hit hard by the mental effects of the lockdown as we all do our part to decrease the numbers of COVID-19 cases in Ontario,” says Wellington-Halton Hills MP Michael Chong. “It is crucial that we are there for our youth. Organizations like CMHA play an important part in Ontario’s mental health roadmap. The Integrated Youth Services Network sites will allow youth the ability to get mental health counselling where and when they need it.”

The Fergus site is expected to serve over 5,000 youth.

“The IYSN project was inspired by Dr. Joanna Henderson and the Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario model,” explains CMHA Waterloo Wellington CEO Helen Fishburn. “It will have a ‘one-door’ policy which is a huge benefit to youth. It means that a young person will only need to tell their story once in order to access and use the services at any of the sites.”

The IYSN location in Fergus will be located at Skyline Community Hub, a facility owned and managed by Skyline Group of Companies. Skyline has promised to invest more than $1 million in this hub to support its non-profit tenants. The resulting reduced construction and operating costs will allow the non-profit organizations to dedicate more of their resources to programming. In addition to IYSN, these tenants include Big Brothers Big Sisters of Centre Wellington and Family Counselling and Support Services for Guelph-Wellington.

“Providing the space and investment to help facilitate services for our youth is critically important for our communities, now more than ever,” says R. Jason Ashdown, co-founder and Chief Sustainability Officer at Skyline. “Skyline is always looking for creative and innovative ways to help effect positive change; this philosophy is integral to how we operate.”