CUPS Corner: Getting established in the community and planting roots in resilience
Oh, the nineties! The decade brings fond memories of nights with TGIF (Thank Goodness, it’s Friday!) programming, the heyday of girl and boy-bands, the Sister Act movies, enormous cell phones, Dolly the sheep being cloned and Dad being "paged" on his beeper. Also, don’t forget about the Y2K hubbub as the decade ended and we all thought the world would end. Thankfully it didn’t, so today we can celebrate CUPS’ 30 Anniversary year by looking back at this exciting decade and some of our key milestones achieved. After all, in order to know where you’re going, it’s important to look back to where you came from, and the 90s is a key stop in our journey to understanding how we evolved into the science-based organization we are today.
One could argue that it was over the 90s that CUPS firmly planted its roots in the Calgary community. What began in 1989 as a place where low-income and homeless Calgarians could receive basic medical care and referral services evolved into something bigger that decade. Over the course of those early years and into the end of the century, the learning curve was steep, as was the demand for CUPS’s services. With annual operational budgets ranging from about $50,000 to $100,000, the CUPS team got to work making a difference in the lives of those who needed it the most.
In 1994, CUPS expanded its offering beyond individual adults. The Family Development Centre was created to provide early intervention and support programs that focused not only on the social, emotional and cognitive development of children, but also considered the well-being of the entire family. The goal was — and continues to be — to help families get stronger. The centre offers support in: goal setting; parent education and skill development; and parent referrals to community resources. In addition, participants get lunch, childcare and transportation help while attending CUPS appointments and groups.
A year later in 1995, the Shared Care Mental Health team was added to address the growing issue of mental health and addiction among Calgary’s vulnerable population. Like the Family Development Centre, this program also continues today. The clinic is intended for people who use CUPS Health Services and need extra support in areas such as: counselling services; psychiatric assessment; and medication support and prescriptions. It also provides referrals for: addictions counselling; occupational therapy assessments; other mental health support agencies and programs; and hospitals and hospital programs.
These two programs formed in the 90s set CUPS apart from other nonprofits at the time and established our organization as a leader in the community in providing integrated care services. Though we may not have realized it at the time, even then CUPS was redefining how non-profits approach the social challenges of poverty and trauma and making a real difference; we were setting the foundation on which we operate presently. Today, CUPS doesn’t simply solve problems, but we take a big picture approach that creates lasting, positive change for our clients, their children and our city. We build resilience for life.
Join us on our blog every month over the coming year as we go more in-depth into our past and celebrate where we’ve come from. In November, we'll be recharging our old MP3 players and rebooting the original iPhone (remember when it came out in 2007?!), and taking readers into a new millennia at CUPS, where we laid the scientific foundation of the Brain Story and began exploring how the experiences we have when we’re young — both good and bad — build our brains and bodies into adulthood.
Interested in getting involved at CUPS? Click here.