Vancouver Coastal Health’s Sea to Sky Mental Health and Addiction Services is seeking the community’s help.
The Squamish mental health care provider is calling all adults who have previously used their mental health and substance abuse services, their families and community partners to consider being part of an advisory committee that will help consult the organization through upcoming plans, growth and changes.
“This initiative we’re wanting to start, and the information session, is about engaging families and former patients and other community partners, to hear from them how we’re doing and to be informed by them in terms of what are some opportunities that we’re missing as we move forward and make some programming changes,” said Kevin Fraser, manager of Sea to Sky Mental Health and Addiction Services.
“We’re realizing that we may not have all the answers and let’s hear from those who are actually experiencing our services in the community.”
The service provider is hoping for an advisory group comprised of about 15 to 20 members that will equally represent former patients, their family members and community partners.
Fraser adds that the idea of a local advisory committee fits in well with Vancouver Coastal Health’s focus on community engagement.
“It’s been happening in various pockets in Vancouver Coastal Health,” he explained. “Here in Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton, we’ve gone through a lot of internal organizational change, and I think we’ve gone as far as we would like to go without consultation with our community partners.”
Some of these internal organizational changes include last year’s shift to a primary care model of practice.
“We have our clinicians located in family practice settings, Monday to Friday in the afternoon,” Fraser said.
“We’re set up so that if someone is self-referred or referred by a [general practitioner], their first point of contact usually is now occurring in the same place that they’d see their GP in a family practice, and we make a determination there whether they need to be stepped up to more specialized care within our center.”
This approach to assessment and treatment – which aims to further normalize mental health and substance abuse as a health care issue and better integrate it into the broader health care system – has also proved to be highly beneficial. Fraser says it’s decreased wait times for mental health services from 350 days to 24 hours and taken a waitlist of 70 people down to zero.
Increased availability for mental health and substance abuse care is particularly important for the Sea to Sky community.
Although Fraser says levels of drug-use varies with the seasonal ebb and flow of the region’s large transient population while generally remaining on par with other rural communities in B.C., substance abuse is still prominent.
“Squamish and Whistler have higher binge drinking rates than the rest of the province and there certainly is a cohort within the community of methamphetamine usage.”
Those interested in the committee can attend a meeting on Oct. 6 at the Squamish Adventure Centre from 6:30 to 8 p.m.
