Column: A new project putting psychiatric nurses inside the Vancouver Police Department has resulted in 754 emergency calls diverted 'to a more appropriate non-police response.
Putting psychiatric nurses inside a Vancouver Police Department’s operations centre has dramatically reduced the number of times “a cop with a gun” was sent to a mental-health emergency.
Starting last June, Vancouver Coastal Health has been assigning nurses to the centre where the police handle 911 calls with the job of triaging mental health emergencies.
Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.
Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.
Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.
Don't have an account? Create Account
Since then, the nurses have handled 1,372 mental-health emergency calls and 743 of those — or 54 per cent — were either resolved by the nurse or diverted to “more appropriate” health-care based responses so that police were not needed, Bonnie Wilson, Vancouver Coastal Health’s Vancouver community operations director, told city council on Tuesday.
It’s been a long time coming.
A little more than a decade ago, Vancouver’s then-police chief stood beside the then-mayor and memorably declared the mental illness on the city’s street was getting worse, and required the province’s help.
“The answer for someone suffering a mental health crisis is not a cop with a gun,” then VPD chief Jim Chu told reporters at a 2013 press conference, when the two united to call on the provincial government to step up to help the city, and its police, confront the crisis.
It seems like Vancouver got tired of waiting for the province.
On Tuesday, council heard some early results of its decision to have the city, for the first time, provide municipal funding to hire nurses to join police on mental-health response. In particular, health officials, police leaders, politicians and city staff are hailing one part of that decision, to assign the psychiatric nurses to the call centre.
A daily roundup of Opinion pieces from the Sun and beyond.
By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.
A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.
The next issue of Informed Opinion will soon be in your inbox.
We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again
“We have some great examples of how that nurse was able to look up the person’s medical history, know that they were attached to a community team, and arrange for that team to go out the next day to visit them — all of which diverted a police response,” Wilson said.
“We were also able to do some troubleshooting, problem solving, and de-escalation on the phone with individuals. We’re quite excited about the early results.”
This work stems from one of the biggest pledges of the 2022 Vancouver election campaign: ABC Vancouver’s promise to hire 100 additional police officers and 100 mental health nurses to improve public safety in the city.
The promise seemed to resonate with many Vancouver voters, at a time when the city, like many others around North America, was grappling with worries over public disorder, mental illness, and crime coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
ABC Vancouver swept to power, and quickly moved quickly to start boosting the police budget and allocating money for nurses.
The police department is a core municipal responsibility, and the officer hires came quickly. The hiring of the nurses has been slower: Tuesday’s update showed VCH has so far filled 16.5 full-time equivalent positions through this funding stream from the city, another 19.5 positions are in the process of being recruited, and there are plans to eventually recruit another 22, for a total of 58 hires.
But Wilson said Tuesday that VCH is going through “a fairly typical ramp-up and hiring process,” and is “not concerned about the pace at all.”
“We get asked about this quite a bit, why haven’t we hired all the people yet,” Wilson said. “We’re implementing a phased approach with the hiring, this is really a standard that we do use in the health system.”
Wilson read to council a prepared statement from a director of VCH’s Indigenous health team, saying: “What we are attempting to do here in VCH has never been done before in any health authority in the province of B.C., or nationally across Canada.”
The city does not employ nurses, so these hires are not built into the municipal budget, but funded through a $4.67 million city operating grant to VCH. Council approved the requested grant unanimously Tuesday. Added to the money remaining from the grant approved last year, this brings total city funding for the program to $6.85 million for 2024.
A municipal government sending millions in grant money “upstream” to a provincially funded health authority is not a typical arrangement.
That subject came up a few times during Tuesday’s meeting.
Ideally, ABC Coun. Rebecca Bligh said, the program’s success will eventually make it undeniable for the provincial Ministry of Health to start footing the bill.
Wilson chimed in: “Proof of concept.”
“Proof of concept, right,” Bligh replied. “I’m going to ask you a really tough question: When is that going to happen?”
Bob Chapman, a vice-president with Vancouver Coastal Health, took a stab at that tough question, replying that the province is closely watching the program in Vancouver, and is spending more on mental health response.
“I do think there’s a shift happening,” Chapman said.
Other municipalities in Canada are watching with interest what’s happening in Vancouver, councillors said.
“This is exactly what the public’s been wanting for so long,” said ABC Coun. Lisa Dominato. “Vancouver is an incubator municipality, and potentially this could be scalable and replicable in other municipalities, so we will be having conversations with the about province about maybe uploading those costs in the future.”
Speaking after Tuesday’s council meeting, VPD Deputy Chief Fiona Wilson said the number of diversions of mental health calls away from police was “incredible news,” not only for police resources, but also for providing better service for community members who need help.
“If we can get to a place where there’s a recognition that police are not required, and there’s an alternate response that is more appropriate, then we are all over that,” she said. “That is something we support greatly.”
dfumano@postmedia.com
twitter.com/fumano
Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don’t miss the news you need to know — add VancouverSun.com and TheProvince.com to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.
You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber: For just $14 a month, you can get unlimited access to The Vancouver Sun, The Province, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Vancouver Sun | The Province.
Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. We have enabled email notifications—you will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your email settings.
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Rami G Khouri
Donald Low
Mort Laitner
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
Michael Kwet
visit website
