Supporting Sikh Families

As Peel CAS moves forward in engaging and collaborating with our diverse communities and partners, we are pleased to share that we have been working behind the scenes with our community partners in increasing our staff’s knowledge about our Sikh community.

Members of our senior management team have visited the Ontario Khalsa Darbar, a Sikh Gurdwara in Mississauga and met with Gurpreet Singh Bal, president of the Gurdwara and member of the World Sikh Organization. We learned about the Sikh faith and how the Gurdwara is a support system for families and the community at large.

We serve a large, diverse South Asian community in Peel region, and understanding the different religious and cultural communities is critically important for our work. We greatly appreciate the generosity of our hosts to help us learn about the Sikh faith. The visit to the Gurdwara reinforced that there is a vast community of support surrounding our Sikh families, which is very helpful as we work together to build networks of support for children, youth and families.

Two tangible outcomes from these visits:

• The Gurdwara has agreed to help us raise greater awareness of the work that we do and to collaborate with our agency in foster caregiver recruitment within the Sikh community.
• They also agreed to provide workshops/trainings for Peel CAS staff to help us better understand the needs of Sikh families so that we can provide them with culturally sensitive supports