Clinic Staff Make a Difference

The outreach and counselling teams at Westside Community Clinic alongside our community partners do important and impactful work everyday. It’s so good to read a personal account of how one of our Westside team members was able to make a difference in someone’s life. Justine, we are all so proud of you!

In the summer of 2021, Delbert Paintednose carefully propped a box spring atop two pillars cobbled together from scrap and a recycled bed frame. This, in a back alley in west Saskatoon, was the closest thing he had to home.

Paintednose spent three years living in places like this, hopping between alleyways, couches and anywhere else he could find before he finally got a place of his own this fall.

He said his caseworker, Justine, is why he ultimately found a home.

“I played by the rules this whole time, and it took me three years to get a house. I just about gave up … I’m glad I didn’t, and I’m glad I had someone like Justine to support me,” Paintednose said.

Read the article on StarPhoenix: Trapped: How Sask.’s housing gap fuels a cycle of addiction