MLA Zach Churchill and Laing House Executive Director Hilary Rankin
The Nova Scotia government has announced $165,000 for a pilot project in Yarmouth about expanding youth mental health support in conjunction with Laing House.
Yarmouth MLA Zach Churchill was at Laing House to make the announcement on behalf of Minister of Health and Wellness Randy Delorey.
“This helps Laing Support extend their services to reach more kids in our community who are dealing with mental health challenges and to work with other partner organizations in Yarmouth, too, to make sure that we have our “village of support” for people that are dealing with these difficulties”
Churchill says there will be an assessment at the end of the project to see how many people were reached and the overall impact of the service on this area.
The money is for a pilot project to expand youth mental health support through the organization and Laing House Executive Director Hilary Rankin explains what the money will be used for.
“We have one full-time and three part-time employees, so it will cover that. We’re also doing a lot of evaluations to make sure that what we’re doing is meaningful and powerful and doing what we hoped it would do. So the money is really giving us the flexibility to do programming that youth are interested in”
Laing House Executive Director Hilary Rankin says the organization decided to expand to Yarmouth after a member came here for school.
“There’s this great NSCC program, and we had one of the youth that we work with move out here to do the mental health promotion program and she just thought it would be a great opportunity to do some work in Yarmouth and she thought it would be a place that people could find themselves in Yarmouth”
Zach Churchill, meanwhile, says there will be an assessment at the end of the project to see how many people were reached and the overall impact of the service on this area.
Laing House is a drop-in centre for youth aged 16-29 living with a mood disorder, psychosis and/or anxiety disorder.
Reported by Sean MacLellan
