Mental health a priority as Broncos open season
Social workers will mix with the crowd and offer a quiet space adjacent to arena
HUMBOLDT They were there on Day 1, and they’ll be there on Day 160, too.
Mental-health workers will mix with the crowd and offer a quiet space adjacent to Elgar Petersen Arena on Wednesday night, when the Humboldt Broncos play their season opener against the Nipawin Hawks. That game, to be nationally televised on TSN, marks the Broncos’ first official Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League game since 16 people died on the team bus during an April 6 crash.
It’s been a tough, and busy, halfyear for area workers who provide mental-health supports in the community.
“It’s totally new territory in terms of volume,” said Hayley Kennedy, executive-director of the non-profit Partners Family Services in Humboldt. “Our caseload is heavy, it’s complex and it’s hard work. It’s difficult for our staff — most of them are from this area — so we’re doing our best to make sure we have a sufficient team in place that’s able to absorb that work. We’ve brought in some new social workers to share some of that, and to make sure we’re able to offer appropriate services.”
Partners, primarily funded through the Ministry of Social Services and the Ministry of Justice, serves the city of Humboldt and communities within a 100-kilometre radius. They mobilized quickly the weekend of the bus crash, working with colleagues from around the province to provide on-site support as the community gathered en masse at the local arena. They also rolled out a crisis line for those needing somebody to talk to.
“And from that point, that group that was core — the city, the health authority, us and the school divisions — worked very quickly,” Kennedy said. “It was a process that was fluid, and it was nice to be able to change as needs changed. And that’s been an ongoing process. We still meet frequently, and we have regular communication, to make sure there’s nobody falling through the gap.
“One of the questions that gets asked, every time at those meetings, is who are we missing ? It’s put out there to make sure we’re not getting tunnel-vision on one specific group and there’s somebody being left out. That dialogue has been really critical to make sure we have a healthy plan going forward.”
There’s not much in the way of past experience to lean on as the process of healing moves forward — nothing similar to draw on. But in Humboldt, they’re working to change that, and to turn their findings into a resource available for broader use.
“There isn’t a blueprint. But we’re hoping to make one,” Kennedy said. “We’re hoping to take what we did and make a blueprint going forward — make a plan, so that if there’s something similar in another community, there is somewhere to draw on.
“(The hope) is that wherever you may be, there may be something you’re able to draw out of this situation. The communities can look at their own structures and say ‘if something happened here.’ ”
Kennedy said Partners benefitted from the proceeds of a 50:50 draft held at the Colorado Avalanche home game on April 7, the day after the crash, and they’ve also received corporate and community gifts that have furthered their work. It comes at a good time, she said, because the community ’s not finished healing.
“We’re making sure any of those dollars that have come to us, that are intended to support the community, are doing just that,” she said. “We don’t redirect those dollars to our overhead or anything like that — they pay our social workers to get out there and work directly with people, so we can get on to being a healthy community.”
Wednesday’s puck drop is 6:45 p.m. and will happen at sold-out Elgar Petersen Arena.
It’s put out there to make sure we’re not getting tunnel-vision on one specific group and there’s somebody being left out.