Ayás Mén̓men
Child & Family Services

The philosophy of Ayás Mén̓men is to enhance the lives of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh children, their families, and the community by providing a caring, supportive, and vital community service. We walk alongside families in their journey, providing restorative, holistic, and culturally-grounded family services.

Ayás Mén̓men equips children, youth, and families with life skills, supports, education, and training to be able to live a healthy life and to walk with guidance, confidence, support, and identity in the life they choose. Through a safe, fun, holistic, and cultural approach, our goal is to ensure that every child has safety, protection, security, love, guidance, spirituality, healing, and respect in their lives.

In support of the long-term objective to create a generational shift towards wellness defined by Sḵwx̱wú7mesh values, Ayás Mén̓men offers holistic supports for prenatal, early years, youth, families, and community. The department supports family capacity-building to help families take responsibility to care for each other,  assists families with advocacy, emotional support through crisis, and prevention so that Nation Members are able to support and empower one another.

Ayás Mén̓men could be interpreted as ‘peace to our children’, which reflects a fundamental element of our mandate and vision. The name was given to us by our Elders in 1993.