Youth Services Bureau -- Mental Health Services

Really great place for people seeking help with addictions/mental health/sexuality/ any really hard-to-talk about problems you may have

I am shocked at how YSB encourages a teenager ( raised by me since 2 years old and very well adjusted until now ) to leave their primary parent when they 'take their cell phone away' and encourage them to be with the good-time parent with more $ for toys. parent alienation is a real thing and so is the abuse i have been through. The fact that YSB enables teenagers to not see the the true light of reality is beyond me. So, if others are considering YSB to help their family, I would suggest another path. It will cost $ but worth it in the end. Please don't count on YSB for anything other than allowing your teenager to take total control and undermine you as a parent. I would like to add that there was a severe, written, breach of my parental privacy here which will have ever lasting effects.

Very disappointed in this place, my daughter went for counselling to help work through some things. Unfortunately they decided to tell a 15 yr old that she can move out when shes 16 and they'll pay half her rent. My child suffers from anxiety and depression and there answer was for her to move out on her own. Which then caused a ripple effect and she has started losing herself with not wanting to listen, being confrontational not showering or dressing as she was told to dress and do what makes her comfortable. This has caused an issue for school. How far weve come is gone from just 2 counselling apts. I would never refer anyone here if this is there answer to helping with issues. We wanted individual and family counselling but nope sorry I'll find somewhere else to go.

Any time there was a resource there to help me, they fired everyone who made that resource available. The people in charge of this as a business are truly awful people and do not have any people skills or understanding of the real world impacts on individuals who rely on the resource. When I was homeless and needed help with housing, they used to have someone designated to help with phone calls and digging up ads, helping us navigate that. They don't any more. They also used to have a much wider sexual health care team, and I had so many trans friends who were fired just because they spoke up about issues that mattered. I had long term employees guess my weight openly when registering me as someone who used the service. (I have personal struggles with eating disorders.) Around this time I also had friends who were volunteers who were doing all the work of full time employees but being paid $20 a week at most. There was significant ableism, transmisogyny, general hostility towards so many of us who never had any options. Another thing is that they have a policy of not hiring anyone on for pay who has used the resource within the past 3 years. There is absolutely no well-intentioned reason for this rule to be in place. It is inherently a way to make sure that the people who work there never understand what it is like to be a youth relying on the service. And that these youth relying on the service do not get the pathways they need to get out of hard situations. That's not okay. I have seen far too many people cry because of this business and far too many people overtaxing themselves within an inch of their own lives just because they care about who this organization is supposed to help. Or that they rely on the money involved. But they don't get to say anything about it because the shareholders and business owners hold such a totalitarian grip on it all. Nothing about us without us is for us.

Called the youth crisis line looking for support, thinking it was for 0-24 (you know, like regular youth age.) Got rudely asked by a lady "let me stop you, umm how old are you?" I told her my age and she basically rudely said "yeah, you're an adult. goodbye" basically. It felt like I was a 35 year old in high school. Awful way to end an awful night. Hire a better crisis team. Her energy was horrible. Maybe deal with your own issues before looking to help others.

If I could give ZERO, I would. To think this is where CHEO is sending people?! I was told that I was the problem, not my child because I told her phone/wifi privileges away when she ran away. There has to be somewhere else for parents to turn to.