Addiction Crisis Team forced to disband

By JEREMY APPEL on March 10, 2020.

jappel@medicinehatnews.com@MHNJeremyAppel

A program that brought drug counsellors into cells at the Medicine Hat police station to deal with addiction head on is coming to a close at the end of the month.

The Addiction Crisis Team, which was composed of two Canadian Mental Health Association workers – Ryan Oscar and Genene Kimber-Zinge – and police Const. Travis Funk, will disband March 31 after reaching the end of funding from the Medicine Hat Community Housing Society.

“Our program worked with individuals with severe addictions, as well as a multitude of other barriers and vulnerabilities,” explained Cori Fischer, executive director of the CMHA in the Hat.

The purpose of ACT was twofold – to get addicts into treatment, while at the same time lessening the load on emergency services.

“A lot of the work was done out in the community where these individuals were more comfortable and more likely to be open about what was going on for them,” she said.

Fischer told the News she was informed Friday that their non-tender contract with the MHCHS wasn’t getting renewed.

The CMHA applied to have its funding renewed but wasn’t accepted.

“We’re in a time of fiscal restraint and fiscal responsibility,” said Fischer. “It could have gone either way, but my assumption was without having to apply for our contracts again, there was going to be less money available somehow.”

Fischer said she hopes Alberta Health Service’s addictions counselling services will be able to fill the void left by ACT’s demise.

Insp. Tim McGough, who oversaw the program from the police side, says the end of funding means police will be left with just one officer and an AHS clinician.

“It’s unfortunate, because we did see quite a bit of value from the Addiction Crisis Team, who basically were there to help people, and people are more receptive to receiving help for their addictions when they’re in cells going through issues,” said McGough.

In 2018 – the first year of ACT’s inception – the team helped 123 people in cells, which more than doubled to 250 in 2019, he said.

“There will be a gap in the services provided to people dealing with an addiction and are in crisis that come to the notice of police officers,” said McGough.

According to Jaime Rogers, manager of homelessness and housing development projects at MHCHS, ACT’s inception was a “direct response to the opioid crisis.”

“This is something that the community as a whole – those stakeholders who were actually delivering services to vulnerable individuals and our community council on homelessness – identified as a need, because of a lack of resources at the time for people that were experiencing addictions beyond the 9-5 hours,” she said.

Rogers emphasized the decision not to renew ACT’s funding had nothing to do with changes in provincial funding, which comes to the MHCHS through the Outreach and Support Services Initiative.

The contract was for $190,000 in 2018 and $185,000 in 2019, she said.

ACT is one of three programs to get the axe this year, which was a result of “course correcting” in MHCHS’s various programming investments, Rogers explained.

“Our programs do a really great job at not overspending, so we are permitted by government policy to take those funds and re-invest them into initiatives, and that number is lower this year than previous years,” Rogers said.

She predicts more cutbacks to come throughout the community, given the province’s financial situation.

“We’re going to have a lot of gaps exposed here, with other programs and services receiving funding cutbacks and programs discontinuing in other areas as well. There’s going to be a lot of pressure on a lot of different systems in the near future,” said Rogers.

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