New community recovery team in Swift Current will provide holistic mental health support
A new community recovery team (CRT) in Swift Current will provide holistic support to individuals with complex mental health needs.
The formal launch of the new team took place during an official announcement in the city, March 8.
Monica Paul is the team lead for the CRT in Swift Current, which will provide support to individuals in a wide service area that includes Gull Lake, Leader, Maple Creek and Shaunavon.
“We are very pleased with this announcement to enhance appropriate and accessible support to individuals who experience severe mental illness,” she said. “Many of the folks we deal with, do have complex needs, such as difficulties with symptoms, involvement with the criminal justice system, relationship difficulties, difficulty in finding and maintaining housing or other educational or vocational supports, and also difficulties with activities of daily living. So many of our folks do require far more support than a traditional mental health care system can provide.”
A key feature of the CRT is the use of a multidisciplinary approach that applies the diverse skills of team members from different disciplines to help individuals manage their mental health challenges. The Swift Current team consists of a team lead, a social worker, an occupational therapist, an addictions worker, and three community mental health nurses.
“These disciplines will allow us to reach out in unconventional and untraditional ways for people who are at the greatest need,” she said. “And with that in mind, what our aim is, is recovery. It’s recovery not from the serious mental illness, but it is recovery from the person’s limitations that are associated with the serious mental illness. It means that clients can really give meaning to their limitations, find ways of coping with those limitations, and to find their strengths and to build on those strengths.”
The team will use a stepped care model, which will allow them to provide the appropriate level of support to an individual. An important goal of the team’s support to a person is to promote inclusion in the community, and to reduce the stigma of mental health issues.
“When I talk about inclusion, I mean the inclusion to not only social activities, recreational activities, but also employment and vocational activities as well, and I think the community will realize the benefits of that,” she explained.
Mental health services have traditionally been provided within an office setting, but CRT members will actually go out into the community to meet with people and to establish relationships.
“We’ve gone through our case load and we have determined what clients would benefit the most from what services, and we’re doing some soft transfers,” Paul said.
“So we are already out in the community, and we have been meeting with some of our consumers, and introducing ourselves and letting them know what we bring to the table.”
The intake of new clients will still take place in the usual way, and the information provided during this process will be used to match the service to a person’s needs. Recent statistics for the Swift Current area indicated about 3,000 requests for service a year.
“So in light of that and in light of the increased demand for more specialized services, part of the modernization of mental health is that we had to start service matching and we have to start looking at a stepped care approach,” she said. “Needs and functionality of that person will determine the type of service that they ought to require, whether that’s a group service, but it may actually be a CRT, a community recovery team service, that a person requires.”
The holistic approach of the CRT is expected to reduce people’s use of the acute care system for support and treatment.
“Part of the work of the team is actually to prevent hospitalizations, to get to people before they have to go to the emergency room, or to the hospital,” she said. “Sometimes we can’t avoid that. Hospitalizations are going to happen. However, what our team can do is then we can be establishing relationships and goal setting and start discharge planning as soon as they get there.”
The CRT concept is based on the Flexible Assertive Community Treatment (FACT) model that has been used in the Netherlands. The CRT in Swift Current is one of eight teams in the province. The other teams are located in Moose Jaw, North Battleford, Prince Albert, Regina, Saskatoon, Weyburn and Yorkton.
“The best part of the community recovery team provincially is that no matter where a person resides in this province, they're going to receive a similar service,” she said. “So continuity, consistency, is also important.”
The Government of Saskatchewan is providing $4.2 million in targeted funding for the implementation of these teams in the eight communities. This funding is part of the Canada-Saskatchewan Bilateral Funding Agreement, which was announced in January 2017. The federal government will provide close to $350 million over 10 years to Saskatchewan for targeted investments in home and community care and mental health and addiction services.
Swift Current MLA Everett Hindley spoke on behalf of the provincial health minister at the announcement. He welcomed the location of the CRT in Swift Current.
“Mental health awareness is increasing, not just in Saskatchewan, but nationwide, as people realize that it's perhaps one of the most difficult challenges,” he said. “Addressing mental health is not as simple as a broken bone. There’s a lot of different factors at play, whether it’s stresses that may come from other parts of life – relationship, housing issues, in some cases there’s social services that is involved. Each case is unique, and to have this service now available in Swift Current provides some new opportunities and hopefully some better opportunities to provide better care here in our community.”
He referred to the provincial government’s commitment to improve mental health services in Saskatchewan and he mentioned the grand opening of the new Saskatchewan Hospital North Battleford, which took place on the same day as the CRT announcement in Swift Current.
“These community recovery teams are a vital part of that, as we talk about a new way of doing things in the health care system, and this has started with the amalgamation of the health regions into the single Saskatchewan Health Authority,” he said.
“It’s about putting the patients first and providing the best possible services.”