After 50 years of service to Ontario's at-risk youth, the provincial government says it will close Project D.A.R.E., an adventure therapy program located near South River,
On March 1 Ontario announced 26 youth facilities across Ontario would be shuttered as of April 30. All but one are traditional open custody and detention facilities no longer deemed required as a result of a dramatic reduction in youth being detained through the courts.
One of those is Project D.A.R.E. (Development through Adventure, Responsibility and Education). which has continuously operated as a wilderness therapeutic adventure program serving young people desperately seeking to turn their lives around.
It's an alternative to sending behaviourally challenged youth struggling with trauma, addiction, and mental health issues to jail.
Over the 50 year history of the Project D.A.R.E. program, the majority of youth served were on probation rather than in custody. Because of a severe shortage of beds to meet the demand for open custody, the Ministry directed Project D.A.R.E. to exclusively serve youth in custody as of 1997. When the demand for custody fell dramatically after 2003, especially after 2015, Wendigo Lake appealed to the Ministry to again allow Project D.A.R.E. to return to serving the full range of youth that probation officers desperately wanted to refer to Project D.A.R.E. – the Ministry just ignored the request to make full use of the bed capacity.
It's also a big financial blow to South River as the facility once employed over 60 staff,
In 2000, the government entered into a public-private partnership with Wendigo Lake Expeditions in South River to continue operating the Project D.A.R.E. program.
"Over the past 25 years, the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services has unilaterally slashed Project D.A.R.E.’s funding on four separate occasions, and base funding inflation adjustments have totalled less than five per cent while their own employees have been awarded increases 10 times as large, " says Wendigo Lake Expeditions Board President Stephen Glass.
COVID appears to be the final blow.
"It resulted in the courts almost grinding to a standstill. It's almost a year of courts being shut down. So there's not many kids in the system because courts aren't operating."
Glass says Wendigo alerted the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services that Project D.A.R.E. needed to be refocused, given the changing needs of at-risk youth. Multiple proposals were submitted.
Glass says a survey of probation officers demonstrated overwhelming support for the proposed vision of service which they believed would be an incredibly unique contribution to meeting the needs they see in their caseloads.
"Wendigo Lake Expeditions is outraged that not once has the Ministry accepted the repeated requests over many years to dialogue about how the Project D.A.R.E. program could serve the most urgent needs for mental health and addiction treatment. The Queen’s Park bureaucracy has a consistent track record of hostility to anything which does not fit its preference for bland homogeneity. It is unclear whether the Minister of Children, Community and Social Services is actually aware of the unique history and qualities of the Project D.A.R.E. program," says Glass.
"The Ministry never once sat down and met with us."
In a statement, the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services said that it had inherited a number of underused facilities. The ministry also noted that prevention and education programs had led to an 81 per cent reduction in youth admitted to custody and detention in Ontario since 2004.
The Wendigo Lake Expeditions Facebook page has recently become a place for past staff and students to express how influential the program has been in their lives.
Project D.A.R.E. has proven to be a sort of ‘Johnny Appleseed’ for local economic development as many frontline staff, drawn to the Nipissing-Parry Sound area to work at Project D.A.R.E, have put down roots, creating businesses or being recruited to leadership in various public services.
