“Are you going to turn us away?”
Margaret Tuomi recalls the day two young men arrived at the door of the Youth Wellness Hub in downtown Sault Ste. Marie where she works as a programming coordinator. They were cousins, living in an abandoned building nearby, clearly in need, but under the influence. This was the first question they asked.
“I said, ‘Well, no. As long as you can follow our rules, be safe, and others are safe around you, we’ll help you,’” she says. “It was a long process, but they came every day, they had showers here, they did their laundry here, they used the computers, we fed them, and we gave them some food when they left.”
Open since December 2023, the Algoma Youth Wellness Hub is one of 22 such spaces that have popped up across Ontario since 2022. Their goal is simple: to provide a place for young people to access the range of services and support they need to ensure their well-being.
On the outside, the Hub looks unassuming — a squat brick building that once served as an Odd Fellows Hall. Visitors are required to ring a doorbell and screened by staff on site before they are allowed to enter.
Inside and up a short flight of stairs, however, is an expansive recreational space with sofas, computers, a stage with instruments, and an Indigenous corner. On the left-hand side are a series of offices where youth can meet confidentially with a counsellor, peer-support worker, nurse practitioner, and employment and housing specialists.
Upstairs at the Algoma Youth Wellness Hub. (Kunal Chaudhary)
Downstairs, another large room is outfitted with table tennis, foosball and pool tables, and a community closet with clothes and toiletries. There are also showers, a full-sized kitchen, and laundry services on site.
In the four months it has been open, the hub has seen a flurry of attention and more than 1,400 visits from local youth.
“We get everyone from the doctor’s son to the active addict living rough in an abandoned building. That’s the range of youth that come through here,” says Tuomi. “We have policies in place to keep them safe. But no matter their situation, we don’t shut the door.”
“A place that is all their own”
The seeds of what would eventually become Youth Wellness Hubs were first planted in the early years of the past decade, says Jo Henderson, executive director of Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario.
Back in 2009, Henderson was part of a team that received funding from Health Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health research to examine a critical question: Why did so many young people experiencing mental-health and substance-use difficulties fail to receive effective treatment?
This grew into a collaborative research project called YouthCan Impact, which brought together a coalition of youth, family members, researchers, and service providers to co-design a new integrated model of service delivery.
Jo Henderson is the executive director of Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario. (Courtesy of Jo Henderson)
“We know that the most challenging experiences and difficulties that young people are exposed to don’t arise from a single factor — they actually have multiple contributing factors,” says Henderson. “It seemed sort of obvious that we needed a solution that also integrated multiple different services to meet the holistic needs of young people.”
The design process for this integrated service model began in 2013 and eventually received government funding in 2015. Over the next five years, the model was tested in three hubs in Toronto.
“By 2017, the government of Ontario was very interested in the model and wanted us to examine it in a broader range of communities,” says Henderson.
Their team worked on a demonstration initiative across a range of communities before securing full funding and annualized base funding for 10 hubs in 2020.
“The hope really was to create what young people have said they want,” says Henderson. “A place in the community that is all their own.
“No such thing as a bad kid”
The input of local youth is central to the Youth Wellness Hub model.
In Sault Ste. Marie, a youth advisory committee, composed of 14 youth selected from the community, was formed a year before the hub opened.
According to Emily Tremblay, supervisor of community services from Algoma Family Services (which oversees the hub and its operations), this committee and the youth who attend the hub continue to shape its programming, services, and design.
It offers a bi-weekly neurodivergent youth night, a monthly café for queer youth, and a well-attended weekly cooking class. In the next few weeks, it plans to hold a Pride Prom and a sacred fire hosted by the Grandmothers Council. The hub’s attendees have also asked for a sensory room, which is planned for the next round of renovations.
“We really are seeing a big impact here,” says Tremblay. “And we always ask ourselves: Where would these youth be going, what would they be doing, if they weren’t here?”
Downstairs at the Algoma Youth Wellness Club features table tennis, foosball, pool tables, and a community closet with clothes and toiletries. (Kunal Chaudhary)
Tuomi, her colleague, remembers one of the last times she saw the younger of the two cousins who had been coming to the hub for a bite and a shower.
“He was crying,” she says. “He’d blacked out the day before, and everything he had was stolen. His ID, his clothes, everything. He’d been walking all night, and it was cold, rainy. He was a mess.”
With a partner organization, they got him some clothes and food and helped him fill out the paperwork for a new birth certificate.
Then, together, they called his mother.
“I’ve been in contact with her ever since, because his birth certificate came here, and I forwarded it to her. I called her to ask how he was doing, and she said he’s in treatment — he’s getting the help he needs.”
A few months later, when his older cousin came to their door, they did the same. He’s now in treatment as well, in another city.
“My mantra has always been: there’s no such thing as a bad kid,” says Tuomi. “Kids will do well if they can, as long as they’re supported properly and their needs are met.”
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