9/5/22, 12:15 AM Some Reflections on Learning from the Pandemic: Reimagining the role of Community Organizations During the

uring the Pandemic - Evaluating Compl…

Some Reflections on Learning from

the Pandemic: Reimagining the role
of Community Organizations
During the Pandemic
25 JULY 2020
/ DIANE WALTER

Diane Walter, Executive Director, Margaret's Housing and Community Support Services

Privacy - Terms

https://torontoevaluation.ca/blog/index.php/2020/07/25/some-reflections-on-learning-from-the-pandemic-reimagining-the-role-of-community-organizations-during-th… 1/6
9/5/22, 12:15 AM Some Reflections on Learning from the Pandemic: Reimagining the role of Community Organizations During the Pandemic - Evaluating Compl…

M
argaret’s Housing and Community Support Services is a multi-service
agency that provides a continuum of housing options and wrap-around
supports to women living with mental illness and substance use, as well
as community-based support services including several drop-in centres and respite
services in Toronto for individuals experiencing intersectional issues tied to mental
health challenges and homelessness

The Evaluation Centre posed a number of questions for me to reflect on. I share some
brief reflections below. My hope is that such reflections from both me and others on my
team and partners at the Evaluation Centre lead to systemic learning and system-level
solutions in the future.

At such a difficult time, what has kept you going?

What keeps me going more than anything else since the pandemic is the
knowledge that some of the folks that we’re serving really have no options.
Recognizing that we can make a difference in someone’s life by making sure
that a staff member delivers some groceries, or there’s a wellness check-in,
for example, keeps me going.  Also, recognizing that although I’m a minor
cog, we might still be helpful during this pandemic in somebody’s life, this
gives me energy even when I don’t have energy.

What have you learned during the pandemic? Privacy - Terms

https://torontoevaluation.ca/blog/index.php/2020/07/25/some-reflections-on-learning-from-the-pandemic-reimagining-the-role-of-community-organizations-during-th… 2/6
9/5/22, 12:15 AM Some Reflections on Learning from the Pandemic: Reimagining the role of Community Organizations During the Pandemic - Evaluating Compl…

The generosity of my staff, some partners and Torontonians

The generosity of Torontonians with donations of cash and PPE and both my
team and our partners who have worked closely and well inspires me. What
I have discovered is there are many staff who weren’t stars necessarily
before the pandemic; they did their jobs adequately and met their
deliverables; but during the pandemic they have shone and seem to thrive in
the chaos – you can call them at any time, and they just step up and deliver
in spades. 

Leadership stepping up to the plate

Some leaders in Toronto and Ontario have pleasantly surprised me. I’ve seen
some leaders during the pandemic lead with compassion and empathy. I
have also grown to respect some leaders’ ability to communicate to the
public in a near daily basis that they have the backs of Ontarians, whatever
the challenges are.  

This pandemic spotlights the need for housing as a solution

We can only hope that this pandemic is galvanizing all three levels of
government in the need for housing.  I hope the government can do an
accounting to see if the pandemic has cost them more than if they had
addressed the homeless situation 4-5 years ago. For example, the City has
opened up multiple hotel programs — rented hotel rooms to put homeless
people who have tested positive or are waiting on results and those from
encampments. If they had funneled those funds into building the real bricks
and mortar of housing, I think things would have been significantly different.
Had housing been thought about in a more deliberate solution-based
fashion, this pandemic would not have been so costly.

The Importance of Prevention: Reimagining health care

I think most health care is delivered in the community, but hospitals are the
recipients of the bulk of our healthcare dollars. If we were to re-imagine
what a healthcare system is — not an acute care system or a sickness
system, but a healthcare system — where more people in the community
are trained to do simple tasks so that folks would not end up in the hospital
system, given the fact that when people end up in the hospital it’s often
because all the prevention and all the incremental interventions did not
occur to prevent them from ending up in an expensive hospital bed, They
could have been treated in the community had there been adequate Privacy - Terms

https://torontoevaluation.ca/blog/index.php/2020/07/25/some-reflections-on-learning-from-the-pandemic-reimagining-the-role-of-community-organizations-during-th… 3/6
9/5/22, 12:15 AM Some Reflections on Learning from the Pandemic: Reimagining the role of Community Organizations During the Pandemic - Evaluating Compl…

prevention and adequate interventions, even something simple before

prevention.

What recommendations do you have in response to this

pandemic?

We have to get ready for the next wave. Historically pandemics often have a
second wave. Some questions we as a system need to answer: Is it going to
be worse than the first one? Is it going to be more decimating? We don’t
know. But for us, we certainly have learned some things that we’re preparing
ourselves should there be a second wave. For example, we’re making sure
that our inventory of PPEs will take us into and perhaps beyond the second
wave; some of the protocols around IPAC (Infection Prevention and Control)
we are now making sure they’re ramped up, and we’re aggressively
following those infection IPAC standards.

There are learnings around how a pandemic like COVID-19 could so

comprehensively affect how we operate. For example, within the drop-in
respite setting, we were shifting from using Styrofoam to reusable utensils Privacy - Terms

https://torontoevaluation.ca/blog/index.php/2020/07/25/some-reflections-on-learning-from-the-pandemic-reimagining-the-role-of-community-organizations-during-th… 4/6
9/5/22, 12:15 AM Some Reflections on Learning from the Pandemic: Reimagining the role of Community Organizations During the Pandemic - Evaluating Compl…

because we wanted to reduce our footprint. We were really gung ho about

going Green, but now that is not on the agenda for awhile; it’s totally off the
table. We’re back to Styrofoam because clients are more likely to mistakenly
pick up and use a reusable utensil or coffee cup that another client has used
rather than one that gets thrown out. We’re looking into whether we can use
other materials, but the other materials are so expensive.

We can learn some things from this pandemic that are actually positive. In
terms of guidelines, we are adhering to those around PPE and making sure
staff are spaced — it will affect some of the ways we work in terms of front-
facing, client-facing service delivery. But we are seeing the value of virtual
interaction – however, we haven’t gotten to that place where we really take a
deep dive and assess it. These are things that are just coming up, and where
we are thinking, “That we can amend. This we can modify.” For example, we
can integrate the virtual piece into our work seeing clients one-on-one. The
nurse that we use and the psychiatrist have realized that some people prefer
the virtual interaction with the psychiatrist than the one-on-one

The need for learning and developing system-level solutions

My view is that what we desperately need is to learn from the experiences of

community organizations providing care during this time of the pandemic.
Evaluation teams like the Evaluation Centre have a role in precipitating
dialogues that can lead to co-constructed systemic solutions across
multiple levels of government.  The partners of organizations serving the
homeless need to become learning organizations that better understand the
importance of coordinated systemic solutions in addressing problems of
chronic homelessness.  It is simply not sufficient to say, “we are all in this
together.”  We need to move beyond rhetoric –what is needed is a
coordinated system in which all partners feel valued and supported.

Complex Evaluation

PREVIOUS POST NEXT POST

Towards an Ecology of Care during the Accelerating towards a Post-Normal

Pandemic: Questions to help Frame System- Evaluation?
Level Responses for Chronic Homelessness

Privacy - Terms

https://torontoevaluation.ca/blog/index.php/2020/07/25/some-reflections-on-learning-from-the-pandemic-reimagining-the-role-of-community-organizations-during-th… 5/6
9/5/22, 12:15 AM Some Reflections on Learning from the Pandemic: Reimagining the role of Community Organizations During the Pandemic - Evaluating Compl…

OUR VIEWS ARE PERSONAL

All views and opinions expressed in this blog are personal and should not be considered the
views of the Evaluation Centre or any other partner organisation.

MAKING EVALUATIONS MATTER

Rethinking and Reshaping eValuations at a Time of Crisis

Building a community: Inviting All Evaluators/Implementers to Contribute

NAVIGATE

About

Blog

Contact

© 2022 EVALUATING COMPLEXITY

— UP ↑

Privacy - Terms

https://torontoevaluation.ca/blog/index.php/2020/07/25/some-reflections-on-learning-from-the-pandemic-reimagining-the-role-of-community-organizations-during-th… 6/6