Griffin has been the Housing and Life Skills Worker for the Directions Youth Services division of FSGV for the past year. Throughout the last year, youth came through the doors of the Directions Drop-In Centre in downtown Vancouver nearly 23,000 times.
Housing Supports for Youth
Some of those visits have been youth finding support from Griffin, and he’s gotten to see a lot of momentum build in their lives. Griffin gets to interact with all of the different Directions sites (the Drop-In Centre, 10K, Safehouse, and Haven), so he’s built relationships across the agency. And these relationships mean he’s well-positioned to connect youth to even more than the housing support he provides: the 2SLGBTQIA+ program, SYJA, and Financial Empowerment.
Griffin is often helping youth with things they’ve either never done before or have never had support in doing: applying for housing, petitioning for compensation, advocating for their rights, and more. “There’s no expectation that you figure it out all on your own. We’re gonna go through each of these steps together and hopefully you’re building confidence along the way.” His approach to this work models that it’s okay to be learning, to ask for help, to ask questions, and to have to go find answers.
Celebrating Wins and Strengths
With this kind of client-led support, Griffin gets to see youth have a lot of wins. Sometimes it’s youth taking public transit to get where they need to go, or accessing gender-affirming gear, or a youth finding successful tenancy and having a great relationship with their landlord. Sometimes a win is someone having such a supportive experience that later they reach out asking if they can refer a friend to Griffin.
“I feel like one of the most important things I can do in my position is notice and celebrate people’s strengths and wins. Because a lot of language that’s used when talking about people who are unhoused is very deficit-based, a lot of talking about the struggles and challenges. To be constantly hearing that kind of language about yourself? It takes a toll. And it misses a huge part of the story: how cool is it that this person is putting themselves forward to learn something they were never taught? Doing something new? That is so cool to see.”
Instead of the story being “this person’s life is hard” it gets to be “someone asked for help and found it, and now they’re doing new things and they aren’t on their own.”
A core principle of how Griffin approaches this work is to focus on “the strengths that youth are already bringing to their own lives.” And what kinds of strengths does Griffin see in youth? The first one he named when asked was kindness, saying, “I’ve worked with people who have been in some of the lowest points in their life. And they still choose to treat me, and the others around them, with kindness. On days I’m a little scrambled, maybe someone says ‘take your time.’ That offering of grace, the world needs more of that.“
Paying it Forward
The nature of Griffin’s work means he doesn’t always hear from youth after they’ve moved on and settled. What he does get to see is people “in movement and change.” Youth are applying for jobs, education and training programs, and housing. They are moving out of unsafe situations and into new homes. Young people are embracing and being celebrated for their identities. Every single day, 24/7/365 youth are finding the help they need at Directions Youth Services.
The impact of their experiences with Griffin and the other staff goes even further than you might realized. Griffin shares, “I can’t name the number of youth who’ve told me that they want to be social workers, teachers, or health professionals because those were the people that helped them when they were at their lowest. They want to be able to pay that forward. That hope and that compassion, to give somebody what you wished you had? What made a difference when you needed it? It’s so admirable and it’s something I really am striving to learn from the people I work with.” For every door we open today, more open tomorrow. This is how we build a brighter future, together.
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