Vancouver city council voted Tuesday morning to provide $2.8 million in funding for mental health services.
Most of the grant is awarded to Vancouver Coastal Health to hire additional mental health nurses to be teamed with Vancouver police officers.
This will be part of a program to respond to mental health 911 calls.
The rest of the money will be used to establish non-police de-escalation services and strengthen Indigenous supports, according to the report.
Funding for the grant was enabled by a Vancouver city council motion last November entitled Enabling the Requisitioning and Hiring of 100 New Police Officers and 100 Mental Health Nurses.
Stacy Ashton, chair of the BC Crisis Line Network, expressed concern in council Tuesday that only 10 full-time employees were requested for the co-response psychiatric nurse teams, “which is a lot less than the 100 psychiatric nurses that were envisioned by the original motion.”
The recommended grant funding also includes hiring 58 positions but Ashton said 32 of those are recommended for non-police de-escalation units.
However, the city said that in future years the annual grant to Vancouver Coastal Health will grow to $8 million and “may be used for more proactive and preventative services over time.”
The city is still committed to hiring 100 new police officers, which the city said will bolster “Vancouver’s frontline mental health and public safety response.”
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