Greater Vancouver Community Services Society (GVCSS) was legally established in 1986; the origins however actually date back to a small Kitsilano agency named KIND (Kitsilano Inter-Neighbourhood Development) which started operating in 1972. KIND was created by two university students (Ron McLeod, Executive Director of GVCSS and Diane Dunsmoor-Farley) who had identified a need to provide a range of home help services for seniors choosing to live independently in their own homes. These students felt that the availability of some basic and practical services for the elderly - particularly those living alone - would enable individuals to remain self-sufficient, self-reliant and autonomous for as long as possible; thus reducing the burden on other forms of institutional care. In essence, home help as it was known at that time was viewed by the founding members of KIND as both a cost effective and humane alternative to hospitalization and/or facility placement.

With this vision in mind, a written proposal was drafted in the fall of 1971 and submitted to a federal job creation department called the Local Initiatives Program (LIP). Subsequent approval was obtained to pilot a home help program in Kitsilano for a six month period, and eight employees were hired to perform a variety of tasks in the community including: homemaking, transportation, carpentry, plumbing, gardening, shopping and companionship. Through the door-to-door distribution of 10,000 program brochures, KIND developed an immediate caseload of regular clients, and this client base grew steadily through word of mouth and referrals from community and governmental agencies.

Needless to say, KIND’s life expectancy was longer than six months. In response to the overwhelming need for these types of in-home services, a series of contract extensions were granted by LIP officials until the summer of 1975. At that time the provincial government through the Ministry of Human Resources was advised that the LIP program was winding down community projects like KIND, and fortuitously the Ministry made a decision to assume funding responsibility for KIND on an on-going basis. Formal recognition by this Ministry of the value and importance of home help services was an important first step in the evolution of a province-wide home support program.

The introduction of a Long Term Care Program through the provincial Ministry of Health in 1978, paved the way for making home help/home support a statutory health service in all regions of the province. Along with program legitimacy came the infusion of substantial funding increases to expand services to all eligible residents in BC. For KIND the generous new funding arrangements enabled the Agency to grow exponentially from a $40,000 budget and a staff complement of eight to an organization many times that size in a matter of months.

KIND continued to experience phenomenal growth and acceptance in the community until 1985, at which time the Agency was forced to downsize as a result of a competitive tendering process in Vancouver to determine home support market share. In losing 25% of its business to other service providers, the Board and management of KIND began to look at new ways to adapt to a changing public sector environment in order to ensure the Agency’s long term survival.

Throughout 1986 KIND held discussions with another casualty of home support tendering, a non-profit organization called Outreach Home Support Society, for the purpose of merging our two agencies into one legal entity. These negotiations culminated in a decision made by the two respective Boards to amalgamate KIND and Outreach into a new society called Vancouver Home Support Society (VHSS). As a result of this merger, the new organization automatically became one of the largest home support providers in the province, delivering services to over 2000 clients on an annual basis.

Building on this entrepreneurial spirit, the Board of VHSS decided in 1988 to diversify operations to ensure that the Society would not continue to be dependent on one funding source (i.e. Ministry of Health). In that year the Society branched out considerably by successfully bidding on a Custom Transit program in Richmond, and acquiring new service contracts to manage residential facilities for people with physical and developmental disabilities. Over the next five years the Society opened up a total of eight group homes located in the municipalities of North Vancouver, Vancouver, Richmond and Maple Ridge.

During the expansion period the Society reaffirmed its longstanding commitment to client-centered goals in all aspects of service delivery. Drawing upon the values and experiences of Board members such as Lynn Carter, Tim Louis, Joan Stace-Smith and Jack Tremaine, VHSS played a leadership role in developing a consumer-empowerment model for providing home support services. Our Agency genuinely felt that consumers should have a greater say in the design and delivery of their home support services. To achieve this goal we piloted the Enhanced Consumer Participation Model (ECPM) which basically encouraged service recipients to actively participate in the recruitment, hiring, training and monitoring of their home support employees. This self-directed approach to service delivery has been embraced by the disabilities community throughout the province, and ECPM has blazed a trail for even more progressive options such as micro-boards and Direct Funding. This Agency has demonstrated quite effectively over the years that a traditional service provider can also effectively advocate on behalf of service recipients. In 1998 the Society decided to establish and fund a Consumer Advocacy program within our organization, and our Board specified that this program be for the benefit of consumers who desire a voice in the delivery of services.

The nineties were a period of unprecedented growth for the Society as we firmly established the three core program areas: Home Support, Community Living and Custom Transit. To better reflect the diversity and scope of the organization, in 1996 our Board made a decision to adopt a new name: Greater Vancouver Community Services Society (GVCSS). Additionally, GVCSS successfully bid on an expanded home support contract in 1999/2000; we subsequently integrated workers and clients from several unsuccessful service providers in a collaborative effort with the Vancouver/Richmond Health Board to restructure service delivery in Vancouver.

During the spring of 2008, TransLink released Custom Transit proposals for three regions in Metro Vancouver following their decision to reduce the number of contracted regions from eight to three. With its long-standing history of providing excellent Custom Transit service, GVCSS bid on the North of Fraser Region (NOFA), the territory which included its service contracts covering Richmond, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody and New Westminster. Despite the superb efforts of the GVCSS proposal team, and the Society’s demonstrated abilities to successfully expand and integrate its operations, TransLink made the decision to award all three Custom Transit Regions to a private American company effective January 1, 2009.

Although the loss of the Custom Transit program resulted in significant downsizing, true to its pioneering spirit, GVCSS continued to seek out new opportunities for the delivery of quality service programs in the community, and provide dynamic and responsive service to its Home Support and Community Living clients.

In December 2009, the major health authorities in British Columbia (Vancouver Coastal Health and Fraser Health) issued a Request for Proposals calling for a restructuring of home support services in the Lower Mainland and a reduction in the number of service providers. GVCSS responded successfully to this Request for Proposals, and in April 2010 was awarded a 10 year service contract to deliver Home Support services to an expanded geographical area including the downtown eastside and south Vancouver.

In May/June 2010 GVCSS began implementing a service Transition Plan with the goal of integrating 250 employees and 1200 clients from other agencies to GVCSS by July 1, 2010. These service transfers will give GVCSS a total staffing complement of 700 to care for the needs of 2500 clients in the Lower Mainland. Having achieved this milestone, GVCSS will have grown and evolved into one of the largest free-standing health care organizations in the province of BC.