Coffee With: Suicidal teen helped Touchstone's new boss find her way

Judy Valsonis always knew her efforts as a childcare worker had the potential to have a big impact on the youngsters she worked with.

But it wasn’t until she was well immersed in her career that she realized just how big an effect it had on her.

“I was about 24,” said Valsonis who recently took over the role as executive director of Richmond’s Touchstone Family Association. “I had just come off a really hard shift at a treatment centre with a young girl (14-years-old) who had tried to commit suicide by jumping off the Lion’s Gate Bridge. Some passerby actually had stopped her.”

The experience prompted Valsonis, now 51, to approach her parents and offer them a full-hearted thank-you.

She told them she was lucky that she had parents who cared about her and loved her.

“And you always cared about me, even when you were saying ‘no’ to things,” Valsonis said.

Her parents’ reaction?

“They thought it was nice to hear something they were never sure if they’d ever hear. And I think that’s the case for most parents.”

The timing of her epiphany was not unlike that some former childcare clients experience in their own lives when they realize the attention given them early on helped set them on a course to a better life.

“I used to say to some (childcare) workers that this job is not carpentry. You’re not building steps here,” Valsonis said. “You are planting seeds. And you will not necessarily see the results from those seeds until many years later, if at all.

“But some people need that. They need to see the house they built.”

Most of the time, support and care workers just move on to their next case and hope that whatever they did makes a difference, she added.

And how you quantify that impact can come in a variety of ways.

“Sometimes you measure success that they (former clients) are not in jail. Or other times they have graduated high school, got a job. married, have kids and are giving back to the community,” Valsonis said. “The bottom line is that it’s a success if they are happier, experiencing a positive life and not full of self-loathing because of what they have experienced as children.”

Wading into the world of childcare was a far cry from the life Valsonis knew growing up in the affluent neighbourhood of Kerrisdale, where on the surface at least, dysfunctional families were the exception.

“All families have dysfunction, but I’d say that mine was fairly functional; two parents who were working hard, and a brother who was two years older and really close with me. I didn’t see all the other things that happened in families.”

When she was attending UBC where she earned a degree in psychology, a colleague told her that if she was serious about a career in childcare she needed to have an “eye-opening experience” of life on the front lines.

“I think you have some fantasy of what families are like, you don’t understand,” Valsonis said she was told.

So, she embarked on volunteering at a group home on Vancouver’s east side where she came into contact with a series of challenging cases.

“It was important to me to see that not everyone loves their children the way way my parents loved me an my older brother.”

From that experience, and the later one with the young girl who attempted suicide, way ahead for Valsonis was clear.

“That young girl inspired me to want to make a difference for young people so they don’t feel like they have to end it,” Valsonis said. “I always say that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. And if you can get kids past that amazing, emotional feeling of despair, you’ve made a difference.”

Today, she brings her experience to leading the future of Touchstone as it transitions from the leadership under previous executive director Michael McCoy who retired last month after three decades at its helm.

While there’s new paint and pictures on the walls of her office, there are no wholesale changes going forward for Touchstone.

“Michael and I are like kindred spirits,” Valsonis said. “While we do things differently, our vision is the same and that means having healthy families, not just children, youth or adults, but the whole group.”

Part of that is the continuation of the Front Porch Program which is billed as a barrier-free program that provides counselling and support services before any government support service intervention.

“It (the Front Porch Program) was both of our visions, but Michael had this line that family is the first community we belong to. And that’s what is missing. It’s our missing link,” Valsonis said. “The Front Porch was all about building family, and it doesn’t have to be blood-related. It can be really good friends, teachers, coaches, anyone who’s invested in children and getting support when you’re struggling.

“Because, no matter where you come from in this world, and no matter if you start with money or not, every child deserves a chance. And every family deserves a chance.”