For Professionals
The referral process, step by step
Who can refer, what actually happens at each stage, how long it really takes, what the first month looks like, and the cases where New Steps is not the right placement.
Who can refer
You do not need an existing agreement with us to make a referral, and you do not need to be the young person's guardian to start the conversation.
- Child and family services agencies and their workers
- Social workers and case managers outside the CFS system
- Probation officers and youth justice workers
- Hospital social work and discharge planning teams
- Shelters and drop-in services
- Schools, division social workers, and transition planners
- Community organisations working with young people leaving care
If you are a young person or a family member rather than a professional, start at our Get Help page instead — the intake there goes straight to the same team.
Stage by stage, with real timing
About a week from first contact to move-in, when there is a room. When there is not, the honest answer arrives in the first two business days rather than at the end of a process.
You reach out
Call, or send the referral form. If you call, we take the same information down the phone — nobody is turned away for not having filled in a web form. If the young person wants to be on the call, that is better, not worse.
We answer, and we tell you about vacancy
You get a real answer from a person, including the uncomfortable one. If there is no room, we say so at this point rather than four weeks later, and we tell you what we know about when that might change.
The tour
You and the young person come and see the actual home — the kitchen, the bedroom, the people who would be there at night. Ask anything. A young person who has toured a place and chosen it settles differently than one who was delivered to it.
The planning conversation
We go through fit, supports, school or work, health needs, and what the first month would look like. This is where the case plan and the module plan get lined up, and where we are honest if what the young person needs is more than we provide.
Move-in, when there is a room
Paperwork, keys, a bed made up, and food in the kitchen. Placement depends on vacancy — that is the only reason this timeline ever stretches, and we will tell you which it is.
Checking vacancy
We do not publish a live bed count, because it would be wrong within a day and a worker would plan around it. Call (431) 444-2114 and ask. You will get the real number, including zero.
What the first month looks like
Your file does not go quiet after move-in. This is the part referring workers most often tell us they never get from a provider.
Week one — settling, not programming
The first days are about sleep, food, and knowing where everything is. Nobody is enrolled in anything on day two.
A goals conversation with a life coach
What the young person actually wants next — identification, a job, school, family contact, a driver's licence. The module plan gets built from that and from your case plan, not from a default curriculum.
Your first written summary
A short weekly write-up starts inside the first week: how the move landed, what is working, what is not, and anything you need before your next visit.
A named contact
You get the name and number of the staff who work with the young person directly, so you are never routed through an intake desk to ask how someone is doing.
When New Steps is not the right placement
Saying no clearly is worth more to you than saying maybe for three weeks.
Somewhere to be tonight
New Steps does not do emergency or same-day placement. Every placement goes through a tour and a conversation first. For tonight, the 24/7 crisis lines are the right call.
Clinical or medical care
If what a young person needs right now is treatment, detox, or medical care, a supported housing placement is not a substitute for it. We will say so, and we will help you think about sequencing rather than just declining.
A placement the young person does not want
We will not take a referral over a young person's clear objection. It does not hold, and the failure lands on them rather than on the people who arranged it.
If a young person needs somewhere to be tonight, the 24/7 crisis lines on our Get Help page are the right call, and we would rather you used them than waited on us.
Referring a family instead of a young person
The Back Together program takes referrals through the same route. The stages are the same — reach out, tour, plan together, move in when there is space — but the planning conversation covers visitation structure, the reunification steps your agency is working toward, and how progress gets documented for the case plan.
Use the same referral form and tell us it is a reunification referral, or say so on the phone.
Ready to start one?
The referral form takes about five minutes, and you can send it with half the information and fill in the rest on the call.