Envision celebrates 30 years with Open House

Envision Counseling & Support Centre held an Open House event on Friday to celebrate their 30th anniversary serving the community.

Executive Director Lynda Rideout said it was also Victims and Survivors of Crime Month in May.

"It's kind of a really great combination of all the things that really are the heart and soul of Envision to commemorate the month, but as well welcome folks and to help us celebrate. Thirty years is a long time of providing support and we want to continue to provide that support as long as we can."

She shared how their organization got its start. 

"Weyburn and Estevan both had volunteer committees within their communities to support women that were in abusive relationships, so they got together and joined and created a nonprofit organization, and it was later known as the Violence Intervention Program, so that they could apply for government funding," she explained.

Rideout shared on the variety of services offered out of their four offices in Weyburn, Estevan, Carlyle, and Oxbow.

"We have programming that ranges from counseling for still women that are experiencing violence or abuse in their life. It could be men that are experiencing that as well. The family counseling is for families that are experiencing any kind of crisis, that need some support to get through. We also provide in-home support for families that are dealing with any kind of hiccups, and they need to learn new tools. We work with social services a fair amount and support families whose children are in foster care so that they can have their visits with their kids, or they have challenges that the social workers are helping them to build up their family structure with more skills and tools." 

She noted their walk-in counseling service is now called Rapid Access Counseling (RAC).

"We have a brand new program through RAC which is child and youth and their caregivers as well as our traditional adult counseling through RAC, and we have children exposed to violence counseling for kids here in Weyburn now. It's for children that have been exposed to violence and it's play therapy, art therapy, that sort of thing," she shared. "And we have our FIRST counseling program which stands for family intervention, rapid support team. So our FIRST counselors are located in Weyburn, Estevan, and Carlyle, and they actually go out into the community and work with people that are at risk of violence in their life to help support them to learn new tools." 

Those who are in need of their services may not always know where to turn for support.

"We do our best to to promote our services and to advertise, and word of mouth is also very beneficial. People that have access to our programs, a lot of them share, but there's stigma involved in that as well," Rideout noted. "Some people aren't as keen to share that information, so we do our best to let people in the community know that we are here, our door is open, and we're ready to support whatever way people need that support, whether we can help within the programming that we provide or we can recommend to alternative locations for them to access that support."

Find Envision online HERE and follow them on Facebook HERE.