When Ontario's Premier Doug Ford announced the temporary closure of public schools to help contain the spread of COVID-19, it seemed the parents, not school children, would be overwhelmed with feelings of uncertainty and unease. In fact, Kids Help Phone, a national charity supporting youth e- mental health, saw an almost 100 per cent increase in service demand just days following the announcement.
Jenny Yuen, vice president of national partnerships and chief community officer at Kids Help Phone, is an alumna of the Faculty's physical education and health program
According to Jenny Yuen, vice president of national partnerships and chief community officer at Kids Help Phone, that figure has since leveled off, but service demand is still 60 per cent higher than usual across all communication channels, including text and phone.
“There has been a lot of talk about youth mental health in Canada and around the world, but what COVID-19 did was bring it all to the forefront,” says Yuen, who graduated from the University of Toronto in 2000 with a degree in physical education and health. “We’re seeing a whole spectrum of things emerge in a very short period of time.
“In the first week of school closures, the calls were mostly about feeling lonely and missing friends at school. The second week was about peer and family relationships. Last week, the highest number of calls had to do with body image and eating disorders.”
The counsellors also reported hearing about an increase in domestic violence and abuse, a fact that underscores the reality that home is not a safe place for all youth.
With 30 per cent of the charity’s revenue coming from fundraising events that had to be cancelled due to social distancing, Yuen knew the team had to act fast to fill the sudden deficit without interrupting any of the services. At the same time, the increased demand for counselling meant having to recruit and train more crisis responders quickly. And there was also the challenge of helping over 200 workers transition to working from home.
Yuen says she drew on the lessons learned in her undergraduate degree to jump over all the hurdles.
“People often ask me how my degree in physical education and health comes in handy in fundraising and I tell them my biggest takeaway, aside from learning all about anatomy and physiology, was learning about organizational behaviour and sport psychology. As a team leader, my role is very similar to that of a coach. Especially in the last month or so when we’ve had to move a lot of things really quickly, be really nimble and pivot on our feet.”
Yuen and her team worked with partners and donors to get emergency funding to cover the looming deficit and to spread the word that more crisis responders were needed on the frontline. This resulted in over 6,000 new applicants only in the last four weeks.
“We’re going to train more crisis responders in the next few weeks than we have through the whole lifetime of our texting service in the last two years,” she says.
Ironically, Yuen’s passion hasn’t always been working in fundraising or with youth. After getting her undergraduate degree, she wanted to work with seniors and even got a gerontology diploma from Woodsworth College. But, she started working for the Yee Hong Community Wellness Foundation and discovered she really enjoyed getting partners excited about investing in worthy causes. She joined Kids Help Phone 16 years ago and never looked back.
“Everyone has a mental health story, either their own or that of someone else. If there’s anything we can do along that continuum to help, I want to be involved. I believe that you can start to build a lot of these coping mechanisms at a young age. That’s why this work has been so important to me.”
Yuen says that while people might gasp after hearing the service volumes have doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a silver lining.
“In the last five years we have seen an increase in suicides by a 107 per cent, but the fact that youth are reaching out and we can talk them through a situation and come up with an active rescue plan is the upside of this story. They are feeling more comfortable to talk about their problems.”
When youth reach out, it might be about one thing, but often they start to unpeel other things, she says.
“We tell them this is a safe space to talk about how they’re feeling and we start to identify the things that bring them joy and the people who can provide them with support. Our goal is to equip them with a plan to get them through the moment, one moment at a time.”