Call Auntie a model of Indigenous-led community healthcare

Call Auntie started in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as a hotline for Indigenous people living in Toronto.It's since grown to provide wrap-around healthcare out of a weekly clinic.The clinic is led by Indigenous healthcare providers. It offers a wide range of services including sexual healthcare, reproductive healthcare, primary care, mental health care, connecting patients with specialists and social support programs, as well as a drop-in community lunch on days the clinic is open.“When a community member comes to us, we look at their immediate needs and then work with them to determine what could work in the future and get them to that place, whether it’s a referral to a specialist or housing or anything else,” Cheryllee Bourgeois, Exemption Métis Midwife at Call Auntie, said in a press release.“A lot of the Indigenous community does not feel welcome in the healthcare system, so we’ve created an environment where they can feel safe and culturally understood, and then they can bridge into more ongoing care when they are ready,” she added.When it began in April 2020, it was called the Call Auntie COVID-19 Indigenous Pathways Hotline, helping people access testing and treatment, and supporting people dealing with “isolation, pandemic-related layoffs and barriers to inclusion,” according to the release.“We got an $11.00-a-month phone number and we just started answering calls,” Bourgeois said. “That's why it's called Call Auntie, because it was this idea of, ‘we might not have the answer, but we're really good at problem solving and we're really good at figuring out where things are and what maybe you need.’”“Community members could call us and we would just help figure out a solution to the problem, like you would call an auntie to help you figure something out.”As the pandemic progressed, Call Auntie received an increasing number of questions about primary care as well as sexual and reproductive health—and it became clear that there was a need for more than a hotline.The makings of Call Auntie began before pandemic. The hotline came out of another project called the Baby Bundle Project—a three-year research project about the barriers facing pregnant Indigenous people, with the goal of improving services for Indigenous families, as reported in a CBC News report.That project carries on today in the form of the clinic’s Baby Bundle Program, which provides pre- and postnatal support to Indigenous families.Call Auntie recently received a “generous gift” from the Vohra Miller Foundation, which will support a new community mental health worker and provide funds for client care, according to the release.

Call Auntie a model of Indigenous-led community healthcare

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