Wearing out the frontline

Intervention workers in downtown Montreal are struggling

NewsFeatureHayley Carolan — Published September 4, 2024 5 minutes

Disclaimer: The author has volunteered at Face à Face since November 2023.

Today is welfare cheque day and volunteers walk quickly down a narrow, beige corridor, fetching mail for clients waiting in a line that trails out the front door.

Most of those waiting are sociable, chatting with the people behind them and thanking the volunteers. But one client paces back and forth, shaking his head. 

His cheque hasn’t arrived, and he shouts at the woman sitting at the front desk. 

Heads turn towards him, and the volunteers stop handing out mail. He slams his hands onto the desk. The moment is tense, and no one seems to know what to do.  

Then, Akira Buhaina enters the room.

The volunteers seem relieved as she walks out of the back office. She strides quickly to the front desk, hurried but confident. 

She greets the client, asks him to be polite with the volunteers and assures him that she’ll do her best to help him. Leading him into a small counselling room a few feet away, she offers a tired smile to her volunteers, before taking a seat across from him and closing the door. 

Buhaina is the lead intervention worker at Face à Face, a non-profit organization offering mail reception for people without a fixed address and crisis intervention for anyone in need. Workers also help clients find housing, search for apartments on the private market and help them fill out complex applications for social housing.

Since the pandemic, soaring housing costs have resulted in increased homelessness in Quebec. From 2013 to 2022, the number of people experiencing visible homelessness in the province grew from approximately 3,149 people in 2018, to 10,000 in 2022. Nearly half of this population lives in Montreal. 

The growing population of unhoused people has put unprecedented pressure on the city’s frontline services. Over the last two years, five staff members have left Face à Face. Buhaina has stayed on for over three years.

She is the go-to person for every question, and clients specifically request her by name. She says that despite the hectic and at times stressful environment, she loves her job. But sometimes she’s so run off her feet that she doesn't get a chance to go to the bathroom until the last hour of her shift. 

“It’s hard when someone comes in and they’re getting kicked out of their apartment and they're basically suicidal,” Buhaina says. 

Clients face various systemic barriers and are often in immediate need of support when they arrive at the centre, making it difficult for staff to take breaks.

“There’s a lot going on at the centre, but we do our best to make time for everyone,”  Buhaina adds.

Recently, she has noticed the job taking a toll on her mental health. Despite trying to manage her stress through hobbies, like playing in her band and taking care of her garden, she sometimes leaves the centre with a tightness in her chest.

“A lot of my stress comes from being very frustrated, either with the government or the fact that there's not enough housing, and all these systemic issues that are going on right now,” Buhaina says. “It gets me more angry when I think about how desperate people are, how little help they have and how we’re working with a very broken system.” 

In an effort to protect her mental health, she decided to take a two-month leave of absence over the summer. She is unsure if she will return.

Buhaina is not alone. Social service providers across Quebec are burning out at an unprecedented rate. Within the next two years, close to 2,400 social workers in the province are planning to leave their jobs, according to the most recent survey from the Order of Social Workers, Family, and Marriage Therapists of Quebec (OTSTCFQ).

In a press conference, Pierre-Paul Malenfant, the outgoing president of OTSTCFQ, spoke on the results of the survey. He stated that the province is currently seeing a “deep distress among these professionals which the Quebec government must address immediately.”

“This trend worries us greatly, because in the end, if social workers break down and leave the profession, it is the population who will pay the price,” Malenfant said. “Not only could the quality and availability of services be compromised, but the pressure on the shoulders of the remaining healthcare workers will be exacerbated.”

A brief from the Canadian Association of Social Workers says that the emotionally challenging work performed by intervention workers can make it difficult for them to maintain good mental health. After years of supporting struggling clients and extending empathy at every turn, fatigue can set in. 

Sophie Meunier, an organizational psychologist who studies strategies to reduce intervention worker burnout, says that while self-care strategies can help reduce the negative impacts of emotionally intense work, they should not be the only avenue used to address worker well-being. 

She explains that it would be more efficient to change the entire system that perpetuates worker distress than to improve the well-being of one individual at a time.

She adds that in addition to the emotional stress inherent to the job, the lack of resources that intervention workers have to help their clients can make them feel powerless and lead to burnout. Low compensation rates, a lack of extended benefits and ever-changing funding requirements further exacerbate the issue. She says that changing these factors would significantly improve intervention workers’ well-being.  

Last month, the federal and provincial governments pledged $115 million over the next two years to develop housing for people experiencing homelessness in Montreal. The money will go towards 520 new emergency and transitional housing spaces in the city.  

Edward Eberle-Sinatra, another intervention worker at Face à Face, says this is a step in the right direction, but doesn’t think it’ll make the lives of intervention workers or their clients any easier.

“It’s not really going to do much for us,” Eberle-Sinatra says. “The housing will just go to people at the top of the (Office municipal d'habitation de Montréal) list.”

Currently, most new applicants placed on this social housing list must wait several years before being allocated a subsidized apartment, depending on factors including their income and number of children. 

He explains that organizations like Face à Face need more funding to offer quality services to their clients. With it, they could hire more people to spread out their workload and avoid losing the knowledgeable staff they already have. 

However, Buhaina isn’t waiting for the system to change. During her break, she’s planning to take care of herself by reading, journaling and spending time in nature. 

“I’m trying to find center and balance within myself and give myself the care I need, because so much of what I do is about taking care of others," Buhaina says. "I really advise anyone in this field to take moments to remember who you are.”