Seneca College’s new mental health intervention certificate program launches this May, and veteran community mental health worker Tanya Shute is at its helm as the program co-ordinator. Offered at Seneca’s King campus, the two-semester post-graduate program has accepted about 25 prospective and current front line workers from various helping-related fields, from nursing to police foundations. The program will prepare students with the skills necessary to give support directly to those with mental health issues in the community, as opposed to a clinical setting, like hospitals.
Shute, 44, did similar important community work as the first family support worker at Krasman Centre, in 1998 and later as the executive director. Krasman requires that all of its workers have experienced mental health issues themselves, in order to serve and understand those affected by them. The Seneca program, also rooted in direct mental health experience, is a natural extension of her work at Krasman, where the Richmond Hill resident saw an average of 2,000 people a year. By the time Shute left in 2010 to teach social work at Seneca and her alma mater, Laurentian University, Krasman’s original annual budget of $100,000 had grown to $250,000. It’s now almost $1 million.
“The work is draining, not because of the people we see, but the inadequate funding models and difficult policy environments in social services,” said Shute, who was also a counsellor at Sandgate Women’s Shelter of York, where “women had to leave when their time was up.”
“Your work with people is what keeps you going,” said Shute. “They were fighting your fight, too.”
