Jewish Family and Child Service of Greater Toronto (JF&CS) recently announced that it would be shutting down its Family Resource Centre (FRC) at the Promenade Mall on June 30, after 23 years of operation.
The primary purpose of the resource centre, located in Thornhill, Ont., was to offer programming for young children and their caregivers. However, it also served other age groups through programs like Conversation Café for learning English, and Homework Club for students.
“The Family Resource Centre was a community hub in the neighbourhood. It welcomed people of all different ages, backgrounds, ethnicities,” said said Hannah Wasserman, director of development and communication for JF&CS. “It’s always been bustling and bubbling.”
The FRC, like many other social service programs, has seen less bustle in the last few years. Participation numbers have not yet reached their levels from before COVID. But that is not why the FRC is shutting down.
Rather, it was a last-minute staffing issue that caused the closure. JF&CS partnered with another organization to staff the FRC, and that organization—which Wasserman declined to name—had to pull out for what she called “their own valid reasons,” although she could not go into further details.
In response, FRC posted staffing positions that were open to both internal and external applicants. However, they were unable to fill the positions, and so the FRC had to close on short notice.
Wasserman said staffing became an issue for JF&CS when the pandemic started, as it was for many other social service agencies. Fortunately, JF&CS is in much better shape now, with far fewer open positions than even a year ago.
Through all that turnover, though, staffing for the FRC had never been an issue, Wasserman said. And then, “suddenly there was an external factor.”
“Our lease was coming due at the end of the summer and to try to keep it open throughout the summer with no staff… We didn’t want to have to shut it down right away. We were hoping to get through the summer and give people lots of notice, but it just didn’t work out that way.”
A petition to save the FRC currently has over 250 signatures.
“I just spent the last year at the resource center with my two-year-(old) daughter,” one mother wrote on the petition. “It’s close to get to and my daughter loves it there. She has friends and I have adults to talk to. Please don’t close it down.”
“This centre has been an invaluable space for parents and children in the neighborhood for over 20 years,” the petition reads. “It’s a place where children can learn, grow and interact with each other in an environment geared directly to them. It’s a place where parents can get a little break while connecting with others and build a community, without any financial barriers. It’s a place where the staff are so warm and attentive and bring smiles to the children they see daily.”
Even though the FRC space is closing, JF&CS is already looking into many options to continue the kinds of programming that it offered. Wasserman couldn’t go into details on most of them, since they are still in the works. But she was able to speak about possible ideas, including running the Shabbat circle out of a community centre or moving Conversation Café online.
In the meantime, JF&CS is also recommending people try EarlyON child and family centres, which similarly offer programming directed at young children and their caregivers.
“This was absolutely an extremely difficult decision to make. It was the last decision we would’ve wanted to make. (The FRC) has meant a lot to the agency,” Wasserman said. “And of course, for the community, we’ve been a part of York Region for over two decades. So it’s never easy to close something down or say goodbye, but our goal is to find a way to be able to offer programmes again to the families who came to us all these years.”
