SIGN for the Times is a new feature where people who have used SIGN's services talk about their experience, and how the services and help they received have impacted their lives.
Kachine's story is the first in the series, with more to follow in the coming months.
Along with the stories published here, Access7 is also producing programs with users of the services, and the staff of the programs they have accessed.
Watch here for the dates the programs will be shown on Access7.
Until she moved back to Yorkton in September of 2019, Kachine had lived out of a suitcase most of her life. A mother of two who is now in her late 20s, she had spent her childhood and teen years moving from place to place, her family seldom in one location for more than a year or two.
She had spent most of 2018 in Yorkton, during which time she came in contact with KidsFirst Home Visiting, a program located at the Society for the Involvement of Good Neighbours (SIGN), as well as other SIGN programs.
But she moved back to Ontario with her partner in January of 2019, based on the hope “that my son’s father would become a real dad,” she recalls. When that didn’t happen, she decided to go back to where she had found help and friendship a year earlier.
When she first came to Yorkton in early 2018, it was to visit a friend. She had broken up with her partner and was on her way to Edmonton. Her friend convinced her to stop over, and that visit turned into a longer stay. And that longer stay turned into a connection with KidsFirst.
For Kachine, it was not an easy connection to make. She suffered severe anxiety, afraid to leave the house even to take her child for a walk. She had no confidence that she could be a good mother – “I had no good examples in life.” Her friend was a KidsFirst family, but when the KidsFirst home visitor came, Kachine would find a place elsewhere in the home. She thought of her as a social worker, which had bad connotations for her.
That changed when her friend had a birthday party for her daughter, which happened to be on the day the KidsFirst home visitor was there for her weekly visit. Kachine, under the impression the home visitor came for the party, was impressed; this person was more than just someone doing her job, she felt. At her friend’s urging, she decided to call KidsFirst.
“Lana showed up. We talked. I felt a connection; she was very understanding. I didn’t get that ‘judgy’ feeling.”
Lana then involved another home visitor, “a very bubbly person, and I thought, wow, now I have three cool people in my life, I can stay around here,” Kachine remembers.
“I had always been told not to trust anyone, but I felt I could trust them and tell them anything. You need that when you’re on your own.”
By spring of 2018, Lana had helped Kachine find a place of her own. That involved helping her have a meeting with her landlord and stocking her new home with food and other necessities, basics that Kachine had never done before.
Ten months later, she gave that up to move to Ontario with her partner, the father of her son. When that didn’t go as planned, she called Lana, with whom she had stayed in touch, to say she was coming back to Yorkton.
Pregnant and due within weeks, she received the help she needed, with Lana of KidsFirst working with other SIGN programs. Her former landlady offered ground floor space in the home she lived in a year earlier. Melinda at SIGN Housing Support had found furniture. Kim at the Yorkton Family Resource Centre had collected necessities for her son and soon-to-be newborn.
After the birth of her second son, she met with a counsellor to deal with post-partum depression, and she took parenting classes at the Family Resource Centre.
“I owe it all to them. Without that help, it would have been a huge struggle,” Kachine says. “They all became my extended family. My son knows all of them. It makes me cry when I think about it. They believed in me. They understood me. You need people like that who have your back.”
It all led to major changes in Kachine’s life.
She is getting in touch with her Indigenous roots and expanding her cultural awareness. She had learned a bit from her aunt, but her curiosity also led her to workshops attended by elders, including the Women’s Circle hosted by SIGN.
She has attended SIGN Life Skills Mom ‘Me’ Power meetings, has attended programs at the Family Resource Centre, and participated in Triple P’s eight-week courses.
She also decided she needed to go back to school, having left high school in grade 11 to go to Edmonton with a boyfriend in what she now knows was an impulsive move.
“If you want a good job, you have to go back to school,” she says, so in January of 2020 she enrolled in Adult Basic Education at Parkland College and will complete that in June of 2021. With the help of an aunt, and now her mom, the kids are looked after when she is in school five days a week.
Her plans don’t end there. She intends to take a two-year program at Saskatchewan Polytechnic (formerly SIAST) in Prince Albert to become an addiction counsellor. She has had her own addiction issues and saw a lot of fighting and drinking within her family.
“I’ve kind of seen it all. When you see that, you want to help.”
The move to continue her education means she will have to plan to exit KidsFirst. “They are still family, but I’ve grown up. They did their job. It will be time for me to go on my own, and I feel much better equipped to deal with that,” she says.
“Things I thought were impossible became possible.”
KidsFirst is a free voluntary home visiting program of the Saskatchewan Health Authority that shares child development information and other supports such as Mental Health, Addictions Services, Early Learning, and connections to community services with parents in the convenience of their own home, or other location in the community. It is available to expecting parents, or those caring for a child under three years of age. It is available only to Yorkton residents.
Home visiting is the key way that information is shared, including information about behavioral development, language development, brain development and learning, physical development, and play and attachment.
KidsFirst also offers a Community Outreach and Education worker who provides connections to the Newcomer Welcome Centre, Making the Connection attachment groups, as well as community events throughout the year such as family barbeques and group sessions.
KidsFirst is located at the J Elton Davidge Building, 83 North Street, Yorkton SK. For more information call 306-783-0383, text 306-621-2539 or visit www.signyorkton.ca for a referral.
Society for the Involvement of Good Neighbours
83 North St. Yorkton SK S3N 0G9 | Tel 306-783-9409 | Fax 306-786-7116
345 Broadway St. W Yorkton SK S3N 0N8 | Tel 306-783-9424 | Fax 306-783-9426
SIGN provides services to those who live on Treaty 4 territory, the ancestral lands of the Cree, Saulteaux, Dakota, Lakota, Nakota and the Métis Nation. We affirm our relationship to the treaties that are integral to the foundation of Canada and commit to honouring their spirit and intent. We respect the diverse histories, languages, and cultures of the many people who have lived on this land, and we commit to moving forward in partnership with Indigenous peoples and nations in a spirit of respect, reconciliation and collaboration.
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