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| Photo by Aidan through Kids Brain Health Network |
One of the benefits of our FASD Awareness Day at Queen’s
Park on Feb 24 was it allowed us to bring together several partners from across
the province including Chief Mark McGillivray of Smiths Falls Police, Inspector
Karuna Padiachi and Inspector Derek Needham of the OPP and Ms. Rebecca Fromowitz
of Lanark Mental Health who represented the Lanark County Mobile Crisis
Intervention Team that just made the national news. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/opp-smiths-falls-police-mental-health-crisis-1.5488509
For those of you who have heard me say you need to establish
the police as part of your network in supporting your youth and adults with
FASD, these folks are our partners.
However, I was also told at our Awareness Day that most areas have
Mobile Crisis Intervention Teams. As a
caregiver for someone with FASD, this is the team you want to meet. I would strongly encourage you to meet the
point person for that team, introduce your child to them on a good day, make
sure they understand what a mental health crisis looks like for you and your
child and have a plan and contact info for when this service is needed. While I recognize not all of you are going to
get a mental health nurse like Christine, through your collaboration and
relationship building, you can also develop the same type of bond that exists
between Christine and Sky.
You should also know our local police make a point of coming
into our schools, meeting the kids, doing workshops on drugs, drunk driving,
vaping and other topics, and community events like having the kinder’s bike
helmets inspected. All of these programs
were key in establishing the trust all three of my kids have with the
police. We, of course, always talked
about these visits afterwards and reinforced how the police are our friends and
are safe people to go to. That initial
training has always held and enabled us to go to these types of interventions
now.
Within our organization, we have seen firsthand how this
type of justice approach has led to positive outcomes.
Within our discussions on Feb 24 we learned there is a
provincial strategy for how these teams operate, but your team will also be
unique to your particular area, its needs and resources. There is also, within that provincial
strategy, a desire to build knowledge capacity regarding FASD and mental health
challenges in general.
As you can imagine, losing this program will create
consequences for us. It is a very clear
choice of pay now or pay later. Policing
and justice costs will absolutely rise.
While you might think this is a local story, it is not. All the mobile crisis intervention teams
across the province or the areas that don’t even have teams are being impacted
by this decision of the Solicitor General to end funding. There was a huge call three years ago for
these teams and CBC News ran a story on it then as well in Toronto. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/inside-the-mobile-crisis-intervention-teams-1.4190249
If you are a FASD Advocate and don’t have one of these
teams, you want to have conversations with your municipality, your police
service board, your MPP and your local police Inspector or Chief. The current funding from the Ministry comes
through the Solicitor General but could potentially come through the Ministry
of Health under the Mental Health department.
Finally, in the Rural FASD Support Network, we speak a lot
about inclusivity and accessibility. In 2005-8,
the Ministry of Education did a special education project called Essential for Some,
Good for All. The recommendations from
that project were implemented in the Learning for All document 2013 which still
defines our educational instruction and assessment methods today. As I
hope you heard in the interview, while this team is essential for our youth and
adults with mental health challenges, it is a good for all of our society. Having this touchstone that brings all of us
together as one is what inclusivity and accessibility is all about.
