At this food bank, you can get produce, test your blood sugar and get a specialist referral

White Coat Black Art26:30Healthcare at the food bank

Every second Tuesday, residents at the Toronto Community Housing apartment complex on Adanac Drive in Scarborough queue down the brightly lit hall outside the building's rec room, armed with reusable grocery bags.

On the other side of the big double doors, fold-out tables are piled high with groceries fresh produce, milk, bread, canned goods and even ready-to-eat meals.

But the food bank isn't all that's on offer here the apartments' four-person health team is there, too, doling out groceries alongside primary health care. And their work has routinely kept residents out of the emergency room.

"There's a lot of people that are just not linked to anything. So this is our way of linking people to health care," said Mark Dwyer, the program manager for Canadian Mental Health Association, who runs the food bank with Toronto Community Housing (TCH).

"The food is what brings people in."

The team members, a concurrent disorders specialist, a nurse and two case managers, say they're trying to make care something that feels safe for residents to accept. They offer everything from blood sugar tests to chats about mental health and addictions or referrals to a specialist.

An innovative model

More people are turning to food banks amid the soaring cost of living in fact, the number of people using those services hit a peak across the country in 2023, according to Food Banks Canada.

But programs that connect vulnerable people to health care as well as social services like an Edmonton library that now employs a nurse to respond to mental health crises, overdoses and provide first aid are still few and far between.

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Dan Huang-Taylor of Food Banks B.C. and Muslim Food Banks Azim Dahya say they're seeing an increase in people who are working but still need to use food banks showing a clear gap between what some people earn and what they need to get by.

Mike Morgan, however, said he's hopeful food banks can follow the example set at Adanac Apartments. Morgan, who worked with Toronto Community Housing for 37 years, said he saw food as a pathway to earning people's trust.

"People come to get food. [And] it's a missed opportunity," not connecting people with other services, said Morgan. The community services co-ordinator died shortly after his interview with White Coat Black Art.

And building relationships has made a huge impact on some residents, including Lori Prielle. She regularly comes to the food bank and has grown close with the health team's nurse, Michael Macaraig.

Prielle has arthritis and the beginning of diabetes, and she frequently checks in with Macaraig to monitor her health. And two years ago, when her husband was dying of liver cancer, the nurse was one of the first people Prielle called.

"[Macaraig] came to the hospital, spent an hour with my husband, said some prayers with him," Prielle said. "Michael has been a godsend in the last two years. He checks on me at least once a week, and I can call him at any time."

'Break down that barrier'

In 2016, the primary care team started working out of the public housing complex, an initiative launched by the mental health association, TCH and the province, to make care more accessible to residents.

Initially, the health-care team held events that centred around food like a breakfast program to get to know the tenants better before it slowly grew to become the food bank on offer today.

"When we first came on site, nobody knew who we were we had to kind of break down that barrier," said Keturah Barclay, the team's concurrent disorders specialist. "Some folks, you know, they just need someone to talk to, but they're not quite ready to make [a big] change.

"And there's others who are ready to try and get prepared to go to detox [or] get a psych assessment."

Barclay, who works with people living with both mental health and substance use disorders, says it's all about meeting clients where they're at.

Signs of success

The approach seems to be working. Macaraig says the team helps avoid quite a few emergency room visits, especially for mental health-related outbursts.

"They can easily come in, relate to us and we can literally just talk them through what's going on, and then eventually they'll be able to calm down," said Macaraig.

Even before the food bank began, having a health-care team embedded at the complex five days a week since 2016, saw 911 calls drop by 50 per cent in that first year, according to Toronto Housing data.

Tim Li, research program co-ordinator of PROOF, which studies household food insecurity in Canada, isn't sure, however, that food banks should take on a bigger role.

Li said using food to establish trust and provide health care "in a way that's not stigmatizing" is really important but he notes that charities like food banks, which are only supposed to be used temporarily in emergency situations, are already doing too much.

"We've put a lot of the burden on to charities, on to communities, on to, in this case, health-care providers to try to pick up the pieces of a failing social safety net and a crumbling health-care system," Li adds.

Instead, he said the root causes of food insecurity like poverty should be addressed directly, along with strengthening the public health-care system.

Barclay said she knows the team isn't reaching everyone.

She and her colleagues see about 70 residents at the food bank every other week, but the building holds about 300 bachelor apartments.

Still, the team has seen more residents register as they slowly included food in their programming. There were 37 residents registered with the health team in its first year of operating and that number has grown to 102.

A 'big win'

"Our hope is that through our continued community events such as the food pantry we'll be able to reach more folks," Barclay said.

Macaraig says he's proud of the work he and his colleagues have been able to do with the help of a wholesome meal. Seeing the rec room come alive as a community on food bank days is a "big win" for him.

"Some could be hurting, some are struggling financially. Some are struggling in their physical health, their mental health," said Macaraig. "But when I see them out here, it just puts a smile on my face to see that they're out there getting to know their neighbours and addressing their needs."