Who We Are
We are a group of parents (some are single parents) with special needs daughters who came together in July 2023 when Jane Bischoff approached us with her idea of finding shared, supportive housing for our daughters. Many of us have daughters who attend a day program at Alternatives and this is where Jane connected with us. She also reached out to parents at Community Living. In addition, Toni Hill DSO housing navigator directed people to us. The response was quick and enthusiastic. We were all in similar situations– we were getting older, our daughters were getting older, and there were no public nor appropriate housing options for them. We immediately began meeting monthly in one of our homes. We soon realized the process would be long and complicated so we increased our meetings to every two weeks. We started with the name “Girl Power” for our group, but subsequently changed it to “Our Daughters’ Home” to better reflect our mission. Jane presented our story to the Peterborough Women’s Business Network which resulted in a story in Kawartha Now . Our small group of six families soon doubled to twelve and continues to grow though some are not ready yet.
Our Daughters’ Home: Supportive Housing for Special Needs Women is an organization whose mission is to provide immediate, permanent, safe, supportive housing in the Peterborough area for our adult daughters, all who have developmental disabilities. We are currently composed of seven families and we are growing as we reach other families in similar situations. We have researched other similar housing initiatives in our community and are engaged in networking and marketing activities to create awareness in the community for purposes of building a sustainable network of support–financial and other. We meet regularly and are swiftly completing our action steps which include registering as a charity, building a Board of Directors, investigating funding sources, and exploring a variety of housing options. With no appropriate public housing available for our daughters on the horizon, we are taking action to ensure they will always have a home.
Why Do We Need This Home?
Currently, in Ontario and most jurisdictions across Canada, housing for people with special needs or disabilities is designed, owned, operated and supported by traditional social services agencies that rely primarily on provincial funds. In Ontario this also means that resources are in high demand, access decision-making is centralized and wait-times are 10-years or more. While this may manage scarce public funds it is most often limiting and, at times, detrimental to the health and wellbeing of the person in need of a home, and of their family caregivers.
Often, spaces offered to people awaiting a home are outside their own community, and away from family and friends. Unfortunately, this severs long established community connections and friendships which are essential in providing support and security for these individuals. This is a troubling, often terrifying outcome faced by families, who have literally given decades to the care and raising of a son or daughter with special needs, in Ontario. This is a fear that can be replaced with hope built on initiative, control and confidence by pairing families with other like-families and community champions – individuals, organizations and donors. Communities must partner together with families and their loved ones to encourage, excite, and inspire awesome natural progressions to adulthood, regardless of ability.
The province of Ontario has been attempting to meet the needs of people requiring support through government funding. However, this creates two problems. First, there is not enough funding to meet the needs of all the people who require it. Therefore, the dollars are stretched, replacing the right for a quality of life with the need to provide a quantity of service. People find themselves being plucked away to homes they do not recognize, with people they do not recognize, in neighbourhoods they do not recognize, limited by available funding. Often, due to a crisis, such as aging parents or the loss of a parent, people who live with disabilities go from a typical, loving family environment to a staffed, congregant living environment, literally overnight.
April – December 2014, for the Peterborough region, 73 vacancies were filled from a wait list of 5,059.
This means that our daughters could potentially be “awarded” a “funded bed” sometime over the next 69 years, somewhere within the Central East Region of Ontario.
The primary funder for adult housing options in Developmental Services is the Ministry of Community and Social Services (MCSS). In 2011, MCSS created Developmental Services Ontario (DS0), an agency whose purpose is to help adults with developmental disabilities to connect to services and supports in their communities, and, in part, to centralize vacancy management for core MCSS-funded programs, including residential options.
Despite the Ministry’s best efforts to provide supports, funds are limited; waiting lists are extremely long and wheelchair-accessible housing stock is mostly unavailable. For our community of Peterborough County, as noted in the DSO newsletter bulletin dated February, 2015, from April – December 2014, for the Peterborough region, 73 vacancies were filled from a wait list of 5,059. This means that our daughters could potentially be “awarded” a “funded bed” sometime over the next 69 years, somewhere within the Central East Region of Ontario.
The Financial Accountability Office of Ontario (FAO) estimates in 2022-2023 there are currently 17,856 individuals in Developmental Services Supported Living. It is estimated 28,128 are waiting for placement. There has been no growth in the number of people served since the report 2017-18.
Often, due to a crisis, such as aging parents or the loss of a parent, people who live with disabilities go from a typical, loving family environment to a staffed, congregant living environment, literally overnight.
Our Daughters’ Home was founded by families who want to make a positive impact on outcomes for people who live with disabilities – on one hand, because their daughters deserve a home of their own, and, on the other hand, because they want to blaze the way for other families to be excited about their daughters’ futures, rather than lying in bed at night, worrying.
Our Daughters’ Home is very strong and committed. Members are very active in the community as individuals and as a whole. This is a group of families who have grown together over the past few months, and have learned from one another “the best” ways to raise their daughters to be strong and determined, but mostly happy. The group has also learned from the agencies in Peterborough who encouraged them to be strong advocates for their daughters. Peterborough is a community that embraces diversity and responds well to the ideas of positive change and the members of Our Daughters’ Home are proud to call it home.
Our Daughters’ Home has already engaged in several formal and informal partnerships in the Peterborough community. Community Living Peterborough, Kawartha Participation Project, Habitat for Humanity, The City of Peterborough, Page Creations, St. Joseph at Fleming, Peterborough, Victoria and Newcastle Catholic District School Board. In addition, several private businesses have offered their support and partnership as the group moves along on their journey.