Wild Ginger Writing

It’s not about dealing with the after-effects. It’s not about leaving the police and hospitals to deal with the people struggling with addiction or mental illness. It’s about finding a way to fill the cracks conventional mental health and addictions services have left in the system.

And it’s working, according to reports from Vancouver Coastal Health.

VCH and the Vancouver police department’s collaborative Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) service reported a 50 per cent decrease over the last year in the number of times their clients have had dealings with the police.

“ACT is really a story about innovation and partnership,” Sgt. Howard Tran said to members of the BC Crime Prevention Association last week. “Collectively, our goal is to keep clients out of the hospital, reduce reliance on emergency services including police contacts and criminal justice involvement and help them to attain a life that is not driven by their illness.”

ACT is a team-based service to bring health care and life-skills support to 191 clients, all of whom have difficulty arranging and keeping appointments with traditional office-based health care practitioners.

“Nobody is beyond hope,” said George Scotton, manager of Vancouver’s ACT, speaking at the same meeting as Tran.

“I can say with confidence that the vast majority of our clients do experience improved quality of life thanks to their association with one of our ACT teams,” Scotton said.

The health care-law enforcement model, pioneered in B.C., is attracting attention from cities such as Portland, Calgary and Queensland in Australia, he said.

ACT services 191 clients who often have spent a long time in the hospital or have frequent admissions, face challenges to living independently and have repeated contact with the criminal justice system due to illness and addiction. The clients reside primarily in the Downtown Eastside.

(Link to original story: http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/851164/frontline-partnership-between-vancouver-police-and-health-workers-a-success/)