Shelter for teens now able to expand services to help more kids in need in EUP

SAULT STE. MARIE — A shelter for Sault teens is now able to expand its services to be able to help teens even if they aren't in the foster system.

Arfstrom-Faunt Teen Home is a program run by the Chippewa County Family Project to help local teenagers get the attention and help they need after dealing with difficult circumstances. Since opening in 2022, the program has helped house and mentor 14 teens from the Sault area by providing them with housing, mental health care and more.

As a program with Child Care Licensing, the facility was able to provide housing for teenage boys ages 13-18 and help them get their lives back on track. With this licensing, they are only able to provide help to children already in the foster care system and can prove they are in need of mental health help.

Recently, the home announced they will be transitioning licenses to a Child Placing Agency-Supportive Independent Living facility. This means that the requirements for receiving help from the program will change, giving the facility a chance to help more teens.

“In the upcoming weeks, our organization will make significant changes that will demonstrate our mission of helping adolescents in our community and fight homelessness,” said Tara Tremblay, chief administrator for the Chippewa County Family Project.

Under the old licensing, even some homeless teens may not have qualified to receive support from the program as they had to be referred to the program by the state.

Under the new licensing, young people up to the age of 20 will be able to go to the facility for help with mentoring programs, mental health access and anything else they need to transition into being an independent adult.

"The original mission of the organization was to help the teens in the EUP, because there's so many identified homeless kids, because they're not being helped by their parents or guardians, and they're just couch surfing," said Tremblay. "So we're trying to get back to what the original intention was."

While the new licensing does not require the program give the same amount of access and support for psychiatry and mental health, the facility is maintaining the relationships it built with mental health services providers so the teens will not lose access to anything they might need.

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With the transition also comes the introduction of a new building. Previously, there was one building for the program that only catered to male teens because the number of homeless male teens is much higher than homeless female teens.

"The new licensing is called supportive independent living, which means on site staffing will still be provided for individuals essentially like a treatment program," said Tremblay. "However, they're obviously independent, which means they're working through school, college, work and we're going to be helping them with getting the next step, which could be housing, job placement, getting a vehicle or something else. We're going to basically be redirecting them, giving them all the supports to be able to be independent on their own."

Now the facility is planning on opening a new building over the course of the next few weeks. This building will be under the new licensing agreement. As it is being opened, the first building will be making the transition to the new licensing as well. Once both buildings are up and running with the new licensing, one of them will be for housing males while one will be for housing females.

Currently, the program can house six teens at a time, but with the new facility and license they will be able to house twice as many teens and provide help to dozens more at the same time.

— Contact Brendan Wiesner: BWiesner@Sooeveningnews.com

This article originally appeared on The Sault News: Shelter for teens now able to expand services to help more kids in need in EUP