The Quesnel Child and Youth Support Society (QCYSS) elected a new board of directors during its annual general meeting on Sept. 24.
The executive director of the QCYSS, Jeana Moore, heaped praise on the seven women who make up the board.
“I’m telling you, they are powerhouses,” she said. “I’m so excited for the future of QCYSS.”
Moore has been the executive director for a year, and she said she worked hard to get a good board. She was a long-time president of the society before moving into her new role last year.
“This year, I was just blown out of the water,” she said. “It takes work to get a good collective of people together to do that.”
The new board of directors is: president Jennifer Bird, vice-president Jenna Turner, secretary Kathy Canuel, treasurer Luanne Ruotsalainen, director at large Christy Kennedy, director at large Tammy-Lee Hawkins and director at large Vicki Hartley.
The QCYSS delivers services in three ways. A sexual abuse intervention program pairs prevention and treatment services. They offer a parent coaching program to help people learn and improve. They also have a ‘strengthening families’ program to provide support for families and ensure healthy living spaces.
The society’s vision statement is to have “a healthy, diverse community with resilient families.” Moore said their community has shown that resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“You don’t want to build co-dependency, you want to build resilient families, so they are given the tools to think on their own and do the problem solving,” she said. “When my team is closing a file for a family, I can guarantee that they are stronger than they ever have been.”
Moore said since the society has only five employees, and keeping them safe and able to deliver services was a high priority. Workers were quickly transitioned to be able to work from home and trained on how to make client visits safer.
“We got an early jump on the pandemic,” she said. “Our work is so important, I couldn’t have an interruption in service delivery, I couldn’t have one of our team falling ill and not able to be there for the people that we serve.”
Moore added the work the society is doing has increased since the start of the pandemic, which made in-person visits more important. They also received additional funding through the Quesnel Community Foundation and Red Cross to continue working through the pandemic.
“If we’ve got to connect with a family, four or five times per day, we’re doing it,” she said. “We’re spending more time outdoors … it brought us more funding to build these programs to be outdoors with these kids.”
More information on the QCYSS can be found on the society’s Facebook page.
READ MORE: Quesnel Community Foundation awards $40,000 in COVID-19 relief
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