‘Please keep doing what you’re doing’
Without investments from Region, ‘no amount of money’ will solve mental-health crisis
As Niagara’s mental-health and addictions crisis worsens, Tara McKendrick is urging regional councillors to continue investing in programs that can help stem it.
Otherwise, she warned, the crisis will become insurmountable.
McKendrick, Canadian Mental Health Association’s Niagara branch executive director, said Niagara Region is already investing in supportive housing, transit, childcare and poverty reduction, and told committee members to “please keep doing what you’re doing to invest in and support these social and structural factors both regionally and in your respective communities.”
“If these factors are not supported, there is no amount of money that will solve the mental-health and addictions concerns in our region,” she said.
“If you had a leaky tap resulting in higher and higher water bills, would you choose to continue to look for alternate sources of revenue to pay the increasing bills? Or would you invest in fixing the leak and preventative maintenance?”
McKendrick joined Contact Niagara executive director Nadine Wallace — co-leads of the Niagara Ontario Health Team mental health and addictions working group — for a presentation during Tuesday’s public health and social services committee meeting to discuss challenging issues the region is facing, as well as potential solutions to address those issues.
McKendrick said the Region also needs to support “a safe and inclusive community free of discrimination and exclusion, as well as
McKendrick said mentalhealth programs continue to be underfunded at the provincial level
access to primary care, education and opportunities to participate in our communities prevents illness and supports recovery.”
While focusing on those preventative measures, Wallace asked committee members to also consider Indigenous community members and equitydeserving groups who are often over-represented among people suffering from mentalhealth issues and addictions.
Meanwhile, McKendrick said, mental-health programs continue to be underfunded at the provincial level.
Although mental-health accounts
for about 10 per cent of disease in Ontario, she said it only receives seven per cent of total health-care spending, and community mental-health and addictions programs have been historically underfunded.
McKendrick said many community-based programs have had their budgets frozen for 10 to 20 years, “with no increase to the base funding of legacy programs.”
In Ontario’s $66-billion health budget for 2021-22, McKendrick said only $1.9 billion was allocated to community-based mental health and addictions care.
She said the province has increased funding by five per cent in this year’s budget, but an eight per cent increase is needed
“to truly stabilize current operations.”
St. Catharines Mayor Mat Siscoe said he has heard from drug rehabilitation service providers “that there are no spaces.” He said he was told if people using the supervised consumption site in his city say they “want to get clean, there is no where for them to go.”
Wallace told him she would trust the front-line staff the mayor spoke with, adding she has experienced similar issues in the child and youth system.
“Certainly the experience that we have right now … is that a number of people are knocking on doors and there aren’t services available,” she said.
Siscoe — his community is being hard hit by disturbances associated
with homelessness, mental health and addictions — is concerned about the ability for homeless people to access the services.
While McKendrick listed several services available for them, Wallace said individuals also need to feel safe when accessing those services.
“I think safety comes in all kinds of different layers when you’re talking about being unhoused — from physical safety to food insecurity and housing security. I think the service can be available but there also has to be other opportunities to have that person to feel safe to actually be even in a position where they can access those services and or those services to be meaningful.”