Category Archives: The Issues

Addiction, Issues, Municipal

I hope Kevin Falcon was …

Leave a comment

I sincerely hope that Health Minister Kevin Falcon was lying through his teeth in his recent response to questions about cuts to mental health and addiction services.

If he actually believes what he was saying reflects the state of mental health and/or addiction services in BC … … there are a lot of British Columbians in need of those services who are *bleeped*, myself included.

The heat this summer had a serious negative effect on my mental state, leaving me struggling to return to the state of Wellness I had attained. Unfortunately there is a 10 month waiting period to get to see a psychiatrist; after you spend 11/2 – 2 months working through the backlog at mental health services to get referred to see a psychiatrist.

I have a Wellness Plan, tools and have built a strong support system and so I have a reasonable chance of not falling into a downward spiral during what could be a year long wait for services … with luck.

What would it mean to you or someone you know who, facing a mental health crisis, seeks help and faces a year long wait to start to get the services you/they need? What level of worsening does this delay cause in someone’s mental state and what does this do to that individual?

I was not the only person the heat this summer caused mental challenges for. I have heard from numerous others who, finding their mental state causing them problems went to the hospital to get help in order not to relapse and were turned away. Our local hospital’s mental services are insufficient to meet the normal day-to-day demands for its services; the increase in demand caused by the weather overwhelmed these inadequate services.

I could go on for pages on the service cuts (or as the Health Minister calls it ‘reorganized delivery’), the services that are simply not provided or how overwhelmed the services and programs provided are.

Fraser Health is the fastest growing health region in terms of population growth and thus demand for services. Exacerbating matters is the fact that for those on the limited support provided for people disabled by mental health issues, rent costs are forcing patients out of Costal Health into Fraser Health in search of more affordable, or at least less unaffordable, housing.

The budget for mental health in our region has not reflected the increase in demand. This year’s budget is the same as last year. While on a strictly definitional basis this is not a budget cut, in the real world that those of us who are not politicians inhabit holding a budget at the same level is a budget cut.

In a sensible move addiction services were moved into mental health. I say sensible because the growing knowledge base on addiction and addiction recovery has shown this to be more of a mental health problem that a strictly simpler problem of ‘addiction’

While significantly (doubling? tripling?) increasing the responsibilities of mental health, there was no funding provided to pay for addiction services.

It needs to be noted that Minister Rich Coleman’s ministry plays a role in increasing the problems for those dealing with mental health and addiction challenges. The unrealistic levels of Income Assistance and the lack of safe, healthy affordable housing significantly increases the barriers to recovery for those with mental or addiction issues.

Dealing with housing, budgeting or income assistance is a major stressor for people whether challenged by mental issues or not.

If you need mental health services you are well aware of the limited services currently available, the limited numbers and access to those services, the gaping holes in services and the problem of the time it takes to get access to services.

The lack of services and capacity is denying access to Recovery to British Columbians. It is costing the taxpayers of BC more tax dollars to deal with the consequences of people denied mental health care than it would to provide the needed care.

Sadly, twistedly, the mental health system itself, due to a lack of funding, proper management and leadership has become a mental health issue.

Which is why, although I am not a fan of the propensity of politicians to lie, I am praying Kevin Falcon was lying through his teeth in his statements on the state of mental health services in BC. The alternative, he believes what he said, is disastrous for anyone with mental health or addiction issues in their lives.

Issues, Municipal, Snafu

Bruce, Craig and Housing.

Leave a comment

Craig Holuboch and Bruce are why I was and am so disgusted by the behaviour of city council and the people of the neighbourhood about the lost supported, affordable housing project proposed for 2323 Emerson Street, Abbotsford.

The relapse rate for those in transition from treatment to the outside world is so high that treatment is referred to as “a relapse preparation program” by some.

It is a transition full of challenges that is made far more difficult by the lack of safe, healthy affordable housing. Particularly housing that comes with support for the rough patches; support geared to the individuals needs.

Having watched the toll (in the form of relapsing) the lack of affordable, safe, healthy supportive housing takes on those coming out of treatment, it would seem to be a no brainer to provide this needed housing. Apparently not to government, even though it has been demonstrated that providing this housing has a dramatic effect on the rate of success of those transitioning out of treatment.

It is expensive and costly to keep recycling people through the treatment/help/programs systems and industry, time after time after time. Not just in terms of the large expenditure of tax dollars spent, but also in terms of the human toll it takes on those being run through the system time after time.

The path to recovery and wellness is like building a car for a journey. Putting a powerful engine in won’t accomplish much without a transmission. Similarly treatment (the engine) doesn’t accomplish much without a successful way to transition (the transmission) out of treatment back into the world.

Making that transition is hard and stressful enough without the burden of less than supportive, healthy, safe and affordable housing.

Bruce is an interesting case and a person I have known going back to the time I was homeless.

People, who see him pushing his overflowing cart along the street, do not see the intelligent man that Bruce is. I always appreciate the opportunity to engage in discourse with him, an opportunity that occurs as we are both frequent visitors to the library.

If one takes the time to sit and talk to Bruce it is quickly apparent that he is aware of the fact his packrat ways are what prevent him from being housed. Having experienced it I empathize with being intellectually aware of what the problem is – but being powerless to do anything about it.

It is interesting that not many weeks ago that Bruce and I were sitting in the library lobby having a conversation as to what would be necessary for him to find – and stay in – housing. It was not really all that difficult to arrive at a conclusion. Since Bruce finds himself powerless over his packrat ways, what he needs is help to deal with this reality of his life.

What Bruce needs is housing that comes with support in the form of help to decide which of his finds he will keep and which will be removed from the premises. He needs someone to build a relationship and gently but firmly, on at least a weekly basis, invest the time to help Bruce sort and choose the ‘keepers’. Bruce did feel that shelving to organize and manage his finds would be quite helpful in managing his collection.

Safe affordable housing that provides the type of support an individual needs is part of the basic foundation needed to help Craig, Bruce and similar people thrive. Providing this type of housing is not only the ethical thing to do – it has the bonus of saving money.

behaviour, Issues, Municipal, Snafu

Where’s the Homeless Housing?

Leave a comment

WHERE’S the HOUSING?

That is the question on the lips of the homeless after reading the “Homeless in the City” series of articles.

They had thought that ‘being homeless’ referred to those without housing, rather than ‘homeless’ referring to those who did not own their own homes.

The Harmony Flex Housing Development is about OWNERSHIP, about making home ownership a viable option for those whose income is not sufficient to achieve home ownership without the favourable terms associated with this development.

While we need to find innovative ways to make home ownership affordable for more people …… those who this development will enable to own their home are currently housed and not on or in danger of finding themselves on the streets of Abbotsford.

The Harmony Flex Housing Development has and continues to take time and attention away from the urgent, critical need for housing for the homeless, those who are on their way to homelessness and those in danger of becoming homeless.

Should the churches and others listen to Councillor Smith and focus on this type of development it would be to the detriment of the people in need of safe, healthy affordable housing.

The priority for housing is, as it has been for years: for minimal barrier housing for those with addiction and mental health issues and those just plain hard to house because they are who they are; for supportive transitional housing for all those coming out of treatment in order to break the cycle of relapse/treatment/relapse; for supportive housing that is stable and long term for those (brain injury, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome etc) who need continued support to thrive.

Contrast the effort and speed of getting homeownership housing built for those who are home(ownership)less with the years of excuse making the homeless living on streets of Abbotsford have faced on housing.

It is excuse making. Half the people voted against Plan A but council bulled ahead because they were determined to build Plan A. Council found land, money and when projects were over budget, council found more money; council wanted to build Plan A and, to *bleep* with the consequences they did.

If council had a desire to build affordable housing for the homeless rather than form a committee and pay lip-service to building housing for the homeless, then we would have built and be building affordable housing for the homeless and those in need and the homeless would not, year after year after year, be asking:

WHERE’S the HOUSING?

Issues, Municipal, Snafu

Abbotsford’s Housing Leadership Vacuum

Leave a comment

Reading Mayor George Peary’s comments regarding homelessness left me wondering if councillors are issued a simple ‘crib sheet’ or whether they are required to memorize the ‘official city response’ to parrot back on questions about homelessness.

Setting aside why it is that the City of Abbotsford  has such a limited amount of city owned land, one is left wondering why councillors keep pleading poverty whenever the issue of homelessness is raised.

I have not heard people clamouring for the city to fund homeless initiatives. This is hardly surprising since people are well aware that it is the provincial and federal governments that must provide funding if we are to begin addressing the complex issues of homelessness, addiction, mental illness, poverty etc. Not based strictly on whose responsibility it is, but because of the reality that the senior levels of government are the ones who have sufficient financial resources to fund solutions.

The city’s lack of funds is not the poverty that is, and has been for years, the major impediment to addressing, rather than avoiding, the issues connected to homelessness solutions.

A poverty of leadership from council, not a lack of funds, is the poverty that most interferes with making progress on these issues. It is this lack of leadership that has failed to rally the wide array of resources available in Abbotsford and the province of BC, preventing effective progress to be made on these issues.

The difference between those communities building affordable housing and striving to address the issues that surround and interconnect with homelessness versus the communities pleading poverty or that it is not their responsibility or whatever the excuse de jour is for wringing their hands then sitting on them – is leadership.

There is a desperate need for affordable, supportive, minimal barrier housing in Abbotsford. The Ebenezer home, a 91 bed supportive care home, sits empty. In a city with civic leadership on these issues … anything is possible.

To relieve tension over council

Addiction, Provincial

Homeless and Forsaken

Leave a comment

The suicide of Corey O’Brien was tragic, but the true tragedy of Corey’s Story is that nothing has been done about implementing the recommendations in “Lost in Transition” – the report on mental illness on the streets of Vancouver.

The BC Liberals and the health care system have failed to put these recommendations into effect; as a result the mentally ill homeless continue to be left abandoned to the mean streets, continuously adding new names to the list of forsaken victims.

While a tragic suicide such as Corey’s is an infrequent event, having a person in desperate need of immediate mental health treatment refused service and turned away is a weekly occurrence for the outreach nurse who ministers to Abbotsford’s homeless.

Except for those not infrequent weeks where more than one person is turned away, back to being mentally ill and homelessness on the streets of Abbotsford.

The other evening the nurse and another staff person stayed late trying to help the latest victim of the BC government and its mental health system. Struggling to get a young human being in desperate need of immediate mental health treatment, mental health services at the Abbotsford Hospital.

An ambulance was called and took her/him to the hospital … were he/she was discharged to homelessness – unable to care for or help her/himself; the police were then called and they took this individual to the hospital … to simply drop them off rather than staying and ensuring this mentally unwell individual received the care needed.

Dealing with the Abbotsford Hospital is enough to drive anyone to wanting to run away screaming. Someone having a mental health crisis will escape the madness by wandering away.

So, rather than being in hospital getting the care desperately and conspicuously needed, he/she spent the night in the stressful environment of the emergency shelter.

The homeless, by and large, have no support. No parent, sibling, relative, neighbour or friends to provide support or to advocate and fight on their behalf.

They must rely on those charged with providing healing or to serve and protect to discharge their duty with due care. When the healers and protectors cannot be bothered …

Hospital staff said to take her/him to detox.

Yes, he/she is an addict, suffering the burden of drug use. For those suffering from addiction, their treatment by hospital staff can frequently, at the very best, be called less than professional and rather haphazard.

No visit to detox was required. She/he was detoxed as the result of a mental state so bad, so degraded that it was interfering with his/her drug use.

This individual is so mentally ill that their mental illness was and is interfering with their drug use. Yet he/she was returned to the streets in a condition where she/he was mentally unable, unfit to care for him/herself; left to wander Abbotsford’s streets with decreased ability, capacity to function.

Government and society tells homeless individuals they need to seek help, yet when they seek such help they find there is no help to be had. If the homeless are to be told they need to seek help, it follows that when they do, the capacity, services and professional staff must be in place to help.

To get the homeless into recovery and wellness, it is necessary for the system to adjust to their needs as they lack the ability to navigate the current systems. The recommendations of the “Lost in Transition” report needs be implemented as a priority.

Another priority must be an attitude adjustment for hospital staff and police; while the homeless are more often than not frustrating pains in the ass, that does not justify less than professional behaviour on matters of physical and/or mental health.

The test of the soul of a society, its ethicalness and its set of values, is how that society and its government(s) treat the most vulnerable: those in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those in the shadows of life, those in need, the handicapped, the helpless and the ill.

Our failure of this test of character is written in the pain and despair of people like Corey or the young human being who is in such desperate need of healing.

It is time to make the wellness of people more of a priority than a convention centre, Olympic venues, roads, bridges and ideology. Time to recognize that the homeless mentally ill and/or addicted are wounded human beings.