Vancouver, BC — January 08, 2025 – Voluntary, community-based supports are the only way to ensure proposed involuntary care measures have a chance to succeed.
Stacy Ashton, Executive Director of the Crisis Centre of BC, emphasized the importance of a full spectrum of crisis support:
“It’s common sense to roll out voluntary supports alongside involuntary measures, or you’ll fill 20 beds up on day one and have made no real difference.”
The Crisis Centre of BC, along with nine other crisis centres across the Province, answers the 310-6789 mental health crisis line and 1800SUICIDE line. “We are already part way to on-demand community-based crisis support. The Province has invested in crisis lines and our call answer rate has increased by 46% as a result. Crisis mobile response teams featuring mental health and peer support are available in 33 communities. These measures work, but are not yet funded to answer every single call or able to send teams to support folks 24/7. The cost of community-based support is tiny compared to the cost of building institutions, but one cannot succeed without the other.”
The announcement of two secure involuntary care sites set to open in Surrey and Maple Ridge is meant to provide care for the small subset of people needing urgent mental health and addiction care. “We hear from folks before involuntary care, during involuntary care, and after involuntary care – we hear everything on the lines. Involuntary care is preventable with community-based supports, and community-based supports are what people need to be successful upon release. Quite simply, we cannot afford to keep people in involuntary care forever, so we have to ensure people have supports on the outside as well.”
Media Contact
Stacy Ashton
Executive Director, Crisis Centre of BC
sashton@crisiscentre.bc.ca