Nearly a year after ABC Vancouver swept to power largely on a pledge to hire 100 police officers and 100 mental health nurses, the latter half of that plan appears to have hit a road block.
While the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) says it has managed to hire about 100 new officers, Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) says it has only managed to recruit the equivalent of 9.5 full-time positions.
What’s more, that part of the program has also evolved. As first reported by The Tyee, the new positions are not nurses, but rather a range of mental health and social work professionals, and funding for the program currently only provides for a possible 58 positions.
“It’s still a work in progress,” Brian Montague, an ABC Vancouver councillor and former Vancouver police officer, told Global News.
“It’s a little bit slower than the police, but its also more complex. We are dealing with multi levels of government, different agencies… but I am confident we are going to get there as well. It’s just going to take a little bit more time.”
In a statement, Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim added that he was encouraged by the progress so far, but agreed the job wasn’t finished.
In a statement to Global News, VCH said for the first phase of its program, it was focused on “responsive services” prioritizing help for people with the most acute needs.
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That includes creating new “moderate (non-police) crisis de-escalation” services and boosting capacity of police-partnership services like the Car 87/Car 88 program, which pairs officers with nurses.
So far, VCH has hired 5.5 full-time equivalent positions for the “Car” program, with another 8.5 full-time equivalent positions under “active recruitment.”
Another four full-time equivalent positions have been hired for the new Moderate De-escalation Service (MODE) and 28 positions are under recruitment. That program, which will involve non-police response with nurses, social workers and other support staff, is set to launch on Oct. 17.
Shirley Chan, president of the Pathways Serious Mental Illness Society, said council’s goal of hiring 100 officers and 100 mental health nurses was laudable, but may not have been realistic.
“The problem is it was naïve,” she said.
“(It) did not really take into account what the situation was for the mental health workers and the fact that there has been so much burnout and people have been leaving the profession, and the the difficulty of hiring has been an ongoing problem.”
Chan said improvements to the Car program and to non-police response are clearly needed on the streets. But she said they are also only one tool, and a tool that focuses on the symptoms of the problem at that.
Deeper investments into the health-care system that prevent people with mental illness from ending up in crisis situations that need a 911 response are critically needed, she said.
“I can’t blame ABC. I can’t even blame the Ministry of Health,” she said.
“They are now starting to address many of the shortcomings in the system from nurse burnout to how people are certified, qualified, retention, all of those issues are being addressed but only a little at a time and it takes some time to get us where we need to be. We definitely need to be better.”
The slow progress on hiring, according to Montague, also reflects VCH taking the time to do the job in a way that is effective.
“We are not going to rush into things… we want to hire the right people,” he said.
“We want to give them the support, we want to give them the vision of how we potentially see changes in the city. But we don’t want to be prescriptive on how VPD deploys its officers or how Vancouver Coastal Health deploys its mental health nurses or how they work together to deal with these challenges.”
Along with the existing hires and recruitment for its two programs, VCH said it is also working with Indigenous groups to develop a new Indigenous-led crisis response team.
Vancouver police said that while they have brought on 100 new officers, about three-quarters of them new recruits, its actual target is about 175 hires to account for attrition and retirements.
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