O’Toole announces new wellness hub for Durham

By Chris Jones/The Oshawa Express

Durham MP Erin O’Toole hopes to improve the mental health of Durham residents with the launch of a new wellness hub.

Speaking in the Global Classroom at Durham College, O’Toole said people will often go to Google or other search engines to find the help they need, and he hopes to make it easier for them to do so with the Durham Wellness Hub.

“The Durham Wellness Hub is really that directory of service providers, partners, health care professionals, whether at Ontario Shores, whether at Lakeridge, whether at the Mental Health Association in Durham,” said O’Toole. “We and my team have consulted widely and we’re bringing these tools to one site that people will find and allow it to be a gateway for them to learn more, to seek out additional information, and to hopefully connect with a program here in the Durham Region that they may not have known existed.”

O’Toole said he is surprised to find out that in “some cases, mental health professionals in the community didn’t know there was a youth drop-in centre in that same community.”

He also noted he has met people who didn’t have insurance coverage and were worried they wouldn’t be able to get the help they need. He said these people did not know there is a community living program that is free.

“So even in the last eight months of our consultations, we found bringing this information to people helped [to] educate, and helped connect them with the help they need,” said O’Toole.

On the website, there are no direct resources, but links instead.

The links direct those looking for help to organizations, including Carea Community Health Centre, Distress Centre Durham and the Assaulted Women’s Hotline.

For members of the LGBTQ community looking for help, the wellness hub provides links to Gender Creative Kids Canada, PFLAG Canada Durham Region, and many more.

For Indigenous peoples, there are links to resources such as the Ontario Native Women’s Association, the National Native Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program and others.

Other types of resources are available for parents and families, those with special needs, students and a variety of others.

On the website there is also a community calendar, where those interested can find out about events.

“So, with this soft-launch today, we’re trying to not only let people know it’s out there, we want to engage partners in the process to get feedback from [them] to turn the beta site into a world class tool, bringing people together with what they have,” O’Toole said.

Right now the website is in the beta-testing stage at durhamwellnesshub.ca