For Funders & Partners
Fund or partner with New Steps
What New Steps is, who it serves, how the housing and the programming actually work, and what we will and will not claim — written for the person deciding whether to put money or a mandate behind it.
29
program modules
Built across five waves, in three pillars — the same figure stated in the fact table below.
What New Steps is
New Steps Ltd. is a for-profit Canadian-Controlled Private Corporation (CCPC) based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Treaty 1 Territory, running an Independent Living Program (ILP) for young people aging out of care, with 24/7 support and assistance.
We state the corporate form up front because it is a deliberate choice. New Steps Ltd. is a for-profit corporation. Agencies and partners invest in a young person through a contract. That is what lets us put money back into the work ourselves: more units, stronger programming, and the extras that change a leaving-care year.
There is no charity board the surplus goes out to. We decide how the program grows. What comes in goes back into living, into the next place we take on, and into keeping someone from becoming homeless.
The model still has to stand up commercially as well as humanly, and a funder can hold us to both. The money follows a young person, not a fundraising season. A placement that works is one we can keep offering. A placement that does not work is our problem to fix, not a line item we can absorb quietly.
- Legal name
- New Steps Ltd.
- Corporate form
- For-profit Canadian-Controlled Private Corporation
- Where
- Winnipeg, Manitoba — Treaty 1 Territory
- Who it serves
- Young people aged 16–21 in, or leaving, care
- Housing model
- Three phases, from a house or apartment with support to living independently
- Programming
- 29 modules built across five waves, in three pillars
Who it serves
Young people aged 16 to 21 who are in, or leaving, Manitoba's child and family services system, living in or moving to Winnipeg. The program is open to all young people in care, status or non-status, and New Steps has strong ties to First Nations and Métis communities.
Anyone can reach out: young people themselves, caseworkers, family, or other services. A young person must be involved with CFS to move in, because placements are funded and approved through their agency. The next step is a joint call with the young person and their worker.
The operating model
Three phases, and the support steps down on purpose. A young person should leave holding more than they arrived with — a plan, skills, and a path after 21.
Foundations
Shared homes where residents run their own day, with 24/7 support. Youth Life Skills Coaches visit and stay in touch, teaching life skills and connecting residents to wraparound support. Residents build a foundation of stability and trust.
Transitional Living
Their own fully furnished one- or two-bedroom unit, with 24/7 support and regular coaching. Placement is by need, not age, so a 16- or 17-year-old who is ready can start here. Residents practise budgeting, cooking and work while keeping a safety net.
Independent Living
Young adults leave with help finding affordable housing and a real plan after 21. After you leave, you can still call us.
In Phase 1, residents run their own day with 24/7 support. Youth Life Skills Coaches teach cooking and planning, help young people get to appointments, and stay in touch, and residents can reach our team at any hour. Support is lighter at each phase after that. By Phase 3 the work is leaving well: help finding affordable housing and a real plan after 21, with 24/7 support still one call away. We describe it that precisely because the point of the model is that the scaffolding comes off.
Terminology matters here too: these are phases, not levels. Nobody is ranked against anybody. A resident moves when they are ready to move, and moving back a phase is a plan, not a punishment.
The programming behind the housing
Housing is the container. The programming is what an agency is investing in: a young person's future, not a product.
New Steps has built a catalogue of 29 modules across five development waves, grouped into three pillars — Skills for Life, Building Careers, and Rooted in Culture. Every module states, in the resident's own language, what they will be able to do at the end of it, and what they physically leave with: a piece of identification, a bank account, a resume, a budget, a plan.
Cultural programming is governed differently, on purpose. We are building our Elder advisory and cultural programming with community partners now. Elders and Knowledge Keepers will author and lead that content; New Steps does not write teachings and does not test them. Modules that depend on that authorship stay unpublished until the Elder advisory has authored and signed off on them.
The delivery material itself — facilitator guides, workbooks, assessments — is not published. Partners and funders under contract see it in full.
How the programs are built
Five binding standards govern every module. They are written down before delivery, which means they are things you can audit us against rather than things we say about ourselves.
Every session runs the same shape
Open and food, safety and consent, a check-in circle, the active content, a check-out reflection, a close. Same order, every session, every module. Predictability is the intervention, not a formality.
At least 70% of a session is doing
The room practises; it does not sit and listen. A session that drifts under that threshold has failed its own standard, and the standard is written down before delivery rather than assessed after it.
Food is out first, and it is unconditional
Food is available at the open of every session, before anything else — never a reward for attendance, behaviour, or completion. It is a budget line, not a nicety.
We design for FASD across every module
Routine, repetition, short blocks, and doing over telling are built into every module whether or not anyone in the room has a diagnosis. That is a design constraint, not a judgment about anyone's intelligence or effort.
We certify what a person can do
Certificates name a demonstrated competence — not a grade, not a score, not seat time. “Not yet” is never “fail”, and a resident can come back to it.
Governance and compliance posture
The second question a funder asks, after what the program does, is who is accountable for it and under which rules.
Corporate structure
New Steps Ltd. is the operating company. Buildings are held in separate corporations from the company that runs the programs, so a housing asset and a service contract never sit on the same balance sheet by accident.
Privacy
PIPEDA is the binding private-sector privacy statute for New Steps. Records that originate with a child and family services agency are additionally held under the confidentiality rule in The Child and Family Services Act, s. 76. New Steps is not a trustee under Manitoba's Personal Health Information Act — we apply equivalent safeguards to health information regardless.
Staff vetting
Everyone working with residents clears a Criminal Record Check including a Vulnerable Sector search, a Child Abuse Registry check, and a Prior Contact Check before their first shift.
Mandated reporting, said out loud
Every young person is told what can be kept private and what cannot — in plain language, before they say anything, not buried in a form they signed on day one.
Written procedures, deliberately unpublished
The program runs on a written standard-operating-procedure library covering move-in, daily support, and incident reporting. We do not publish it.
New Steps operates on Treaty 1 Territory, the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg, Ininiwak, Anisininewuk, Dakota Oyate, and Denesuline, and the National Homeland of the Red River Métis.
This section describes our compliance posture. It is a summary for prospective funders and partners, not legal advice — statutory references are current as of the date of this page and should be confirmed against the official consolidations before anyone relies on them.
What we do not claim
There are no outcome statistics on this website. That is not modesty — it is that we will not publish a percentage we cannot show you the source for, and a graduation rate quoted without a denominator is a marketing number, not evidence.
What we do report is detailed writing. Caseworkers get regular written updates on how each young person is doing: what happened, what changed, what to watch, and what comes next. Concrete milestones, such as identification obtained, bank accounts opened and certificates earned, sit underneath the writing, never instead of it. We will not inflate a completion into a claimed change in somebody's life.
There are no rates on this website either. Rates are negotiated with the placing agency and depend on what a young person actually needs, so a published number would be a fiction for almost every reader of it.
And there is no capacity figure here, because capacity moves. Ask us what is open. We will tell you — including when the answer is nothing.
Start a conversation
Investing in a young person's placement, exploring a partnership, or looking at the model — the first step is the same. Tell us which one it is and we will bring the right people to the call.
Or call (431) 444-2114. Ask for a conversation about funding or partnership — the line is also the intake line, so say which one you need.