Nancy Huggett thought she’d lost the chance to become a writer after her daughter, who has Down syndrome, suffered a devastating stroke.

But the 66-year-old Ottawa poet has now become the oldest recipient of the RBC PEN Canada New Voices Award, an annual honour aiming to encourage new writing in short stories, creative nonfiction, journalism and poetry.

Read the news:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-poet-wins-acclaim-for-verses-on-caring-for-daughter-with-down-syndrome-1.7263218

We are happy to inform you that Marie-Josée Samson has accepted the role of Operations Supervisor with DSOER.

Marie-Josee has been an important member of the DSOER team since our launch in 2011. She has worked as a DSOER Service Navigator for several years and as an Assessor prior to then.

We are very happy to have her join our management group!

We also want to take this opportunity to introduce you (or re-introduce you) to our DSOER management group:

• Director: Christine Gougeon (cgougeon@dsoer.ca) – Overseeing the DSOER program, Main Community Contact, and member of the SCS Senior Leadership Team
• Clinical Supervisor: Leila Karam (lkaram@dsoer.ca) – Overseeing all Assessor group functions (e.g. Scheduling, Productivity and Quality of DSO application packages, Assessor Training, Certification, etc…)
• Operations Supervisor: Marie-Josee Samson (MJSamson@dsoer.ca) – Overseeing all Service Navigation group functions (i.e. Intake, Eligibility, Matching and Linking, Housing Navigation, etc…)

We encourage you to connect with DSOER at Admin@dsoer.ca. From there we can triage emails to the appropriate person and DSOER group. Should you want to connect directly with someone from our management group, our emails are listed above.

Together with our team of navigators, scheduler, assessors and matching & linking coordinator, we want to thank you for your continued support and collaboration in providing support to those we serve.