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The report was called Portraits of Peel: Facing the Facts. It was presented a couple of weeks ago to regional council by a coalition of community groups and staff.
It painted a sobering picture of the invisible underbelly of Peel's remarkable growth; the many, many people who have been left behind.
Statistics are one thing but seeing the reality is another.
You don't have to tell Mississauga's Sandy Wonnell about the face of poverty in Peel. She sees it every day. The 12.7 per cent of people who live below the poverty line in Mississauga aren’t just a disembodied number to Wonnell, who is one of four nurses at the Peel Children’s Aid Society (CAS) who deal with high-risk infants.
At the launch of the CAS Foundation's Holiday Wishes program Thursday, Wonnell provided prima facie evidence of the need out there.
Almost exactly a year ago, someone called CAS concerned about the children who lived next door. The kids were running around in diapers and undershirts in December.
That’s often the way Wonnell’s cases open, a call from a neighbour, relative or doctor who is worried about children.
What she saw when she made a home visit shocked her: a young child and a baby in urine-soaked diapers, the baby sleeping in a laundry basket, their mother depressed and unable to buy more food or diapers until her next social assistance cheque arrived. The household fridge featured only a bag of carrots, half a loaf of bread and a pot of old, cold spaghetti.
Although she was able to get help for this family (the single mom is now working and the kids are in child care), there are lots of other stories that don't have such happy endings.
“It’s a lot more typical scenario than you would ever imagine,” Wonnell said later. “You could drive down many of the roads in Mississauga and never know these families existed.”
When you walk in a home and see an infant sleeping in the same room with guns and knives, where the mother has an obvious drug problem and can’t look after her baby, it gives you pause for thought, said Wonnell, a Streetsville mother of three boys.
No, she doesn’t get depressed by what she sees, said the nurse, answering a question she’s asked often. A vulnerable baby is a vulnerable baby.
“Most of these families just need someone to intervene and help,” she said.
The nurse keeps in touch with families she’s assisted and the reunions inevitably start with big hugs all around. That’s the kind of thanks you don’t get in a lot of jobs.
Wonnell, who worked previously at both local hospitals and the Victorian Order of Nurses, still remembers what it was like when she started this job.
“The first year I would go home and think about what I’d seen, like seeing a baby whose only toys were a channel changer and a toothless comb. It makes you look at life and realize how much most of us take for granted. It's very eye-opening. Poverty is a huge, huge issue.”