The province is expanding services to help more Manitobans struggling with addictions and mental-health issues live in the community rather than being housed in hospitals, encampments and jails.
“We’re working cross-departmentally with Families, with Justice, with Shared Health to support keeping folks out of incarceration, out of hospitals to keep them successfully (housed) with wrap-around supports,” Housing, Addictions and Homelessness Minister Bernadette Smith told the Free Press Wednesday.
“A lot of these folks would be in hospital and wouldn’t be able to be released because they have mental-health needs that require extra supports to live in the community or they’d have to go into an institution. We’d rather support people in community.”
NIC ADAM / FREE PRESS FILES
Housing, Addictions and Homelessness Minister Bernadette Smith: “We’d rather support people in community.”
The province is spending $4.3-million to establish a co-ordination hub and expand community-based care, adding 22 new mental-health workers to create two new teams to support up to 300 people in community settings.
The interdisciplinary teams are composed of: psychiatrists; psychologist social workers; nurses, occupational therapists; substance-abuse, employment and housing specialists; support staff; and peer support, a Shared Health spokesperson said.
To date, 13 staff, including the program manager, have been hired into the program with another nine positions posted to be filled in the coming weeks.
“We’re matching people with the services they need to support and meet them where they’re at. It’s a continuum of care, as people need different levels of support,” Smith said.
“It’s making sure people aren’t staying in hospital that don’t need to be in the hospital that can live in community with proper supports… or that they aren’t going back into incarceration,” she said.
It’s a better use of resources, too, she said, citing the example of one Manitoba Housing apartment block with 10 residents, each receiving services from 10 different mental-health service providers. Smith said the Canadian Mental Health Association has been contracted to provide services to all the residents.
One non-profit organization that offers “wrap-around supports” to those with addictions, mental-health and housing issues said expanding care in the community is “good news.”
“The province seems to understand that there’s great value in moving more towards community-based recovery systems,” said Marion Willis, executive director of St. Boniface Street Links.
“It’s all about learning how to get well, stay well and live well in the community. Any time you can actually build that community-based continuum of care… we’re actually doing something that’s pretty good.”
Willis said the traditional 28-day in-patient treatment model isn’t adequate to address current drug-use needs.
“Creating more treatment beds and institutions is not a good idea,” she said. “With community-based programming, you’re setting up a continuum that can support many more people than if you’re on a wait list for a bed in an institution.”
carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter
Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.
Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.