The phone rings at Nelson Community Services Centre: a parent pulling her hair out and looking for some support and knowledge about raising kids. The phone rings again and a woman asks, haltingly, how she can escape the violence in her home. The next caller books a counselling session because his relationship needs some fixing.

Outreach workers come and go, counsellors counsel, and the centre ticks along like a nicely-tuned clock.

It’s all part of a day at the Nelson Community Services Centre, in its new bright comfortable offices on Lake St., in the Community First Health Co-op Building (though a lot of people still know it as the old Forestry building.)

Community Services does just that – offers services: counselling at no cost, as well as running the Aimee Beaulieu Transition House for women and children who have experienced violence, and Cicada Place, transitional housing and programs for youth, and programs for parents. Nelson Community Services works hard to provide solid transitional services of all kinds – be that for children, young adults, women in crisis, or couples and individuals.

While it is now a professional, accredited organization with 22 staff, its beginnings were more humble – volunteers working to fill in gaps caused by major cutbacks to government social programs in the 1970s. Now more than 35 years old, with a solid and long-term staff, the centre looks to its volunteer board for a broad community perspective, fundraising, and oversight.

Lena Horswill has served as Executive Director for 20 years. “People use our services during trying times in their lives,” she says. “Whether they come into our Lake St. offices, the Transition House, or Cicada Place, they are welcomed into a warm, kind environment and then get down to business with our thoroughly professional staff.

“Why did we start? Why did we focus on these services? Let’s go one by one.
The Transition House: for more than 20 years, women’s organizations had lobbied government for a transition house in Nelson. This community dream became a reality in 1995. We named it the Aimee Beaulieu Transition House, in honour of a young mum and her twin babies who were murdered here. We built this home so women and their children can escape from violence, rest and regroup, and with support and counselling, prepare to re-enter regular life.

“Cicada Place? A beautiful name for youth housing. The cicada is a butterfly that emerges in its seventeenth year of maturation. This transitional housing and support system – unbelievable now to look back at the beginning 10 years ago – caused some people worry. But they quickly saw that again, this is a solid, professionally run program to help young people with much-needed, safe housing during a stage of their own maturing. They live at Cicada, stick with its programs, and emerge six months or a year or so later in far better shape to direct their own lives. It’s making a tremendous difference, and people know it. There used to be a wait list of five or six, and now there are 30-40.

“Counselling? Parenting programs? Outreach? It’s part of our integrated work with families and individuals. Sometimes a person needs short-term help, and sometimes for much longer. The fact that our counselling services are provided at no cost to the individual makes a huge difference for people who are already under stress.

“And we’re not alone in our work: we work co-operatively and link with other services agencies and government support in Nelson, so people who come here have access to the full array of services Nelson has to offer.

“It does take a village, and we’re proud to have been part of it for all these years.”

It takes a village and it takes funding: our programs are supported by the provincial and federal governments and by donations from the community. One-time grant funding has been provided by the Osprey Community Foundation, Vancouver Foundation and the Columbia Basin Trust. For more information visit our website.