With the emphasis shifting to keep mental health patients in their home communities, reps from across Northwestern Ontario are looking at what needs to be done to ensure the necessary services are available.
That was the purpose of “Best Practices II: From Vision to Reality,” a two-day workshop that wrapped up Friday at La Place Rendez-Vous that brought out ideas on how to deliver the services, with a special emphasis on rural and isolated areas, and the challenges.
The goal now is to find a way to transform the ideas into reality.
“We have to adapt to all these things,” noted Jon Thompson, director of Riverside Community Counselling, president of the Northwestern Ontario Mental Health Network, and one of the organizers of the workshop.
“We have to implement these things and there’s not really much of a framework. The question is how are we going to do these things,” he added.
That includes striking up partnerships with all the stakeholders–hospitals, community agency leaders, direct care providers, consumers/survivors, and family members.
By getting everyone together for the workshop (about 90 stakeholders from across Northwestern Ontario were here), Thompson stressed they were making contacts throughout the region and sharing ideas on how they might localize the services–and present alternatives to hospitalization.
“The next steps would be to get some of the funding in place, to get the working groups in place, to move these things forward,” he said, adding the changes ultimately will result in more people staying in their home communities.
For example, Assertive Community Treatment Teams (ACTT), made up of multi-discipline groups, have to be formed to provide support through crisis situations, which was announced by the province earlier this month. But Thompson noted many of the people just learned about that concept at the conference.
“There still will be tertiary supports,” he assured.
The workshop was co-sponsored by the Ministry of Health and the Northwestern Ontario Mental Health Network.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
