Service teams with lived experience help redirect police and EMS resources.
APTN News: It’s been three months since the Alternative Neighbourhood Crisis Response (ANCHOR) launched in Ottawa’s Centretown neighbourhood. The trial program, funded by the City of Ottawa, officially hit the streets on Aug.15.
When residents of the downtown neighbourhood call the 2-1-1 non-emergency line, they can request on-the-ground support from ANCHOR crisis workers.
Project manager Morissa-Dalia Ellis said the service aims to meet people where they are.
“(By) not necessarily seeing people as the crisis that they are in, but seeing people really as the determinants that have led them there just allows for a deeper level of care,” Ellis said in an interview with APTN News.
ANCHOR workers receive over 200 hours of training to approach a variety of situations related to mental health and substance abuse.
With more people calling 2-1-1, Ellis said the program is helping offload calls from police and emergency medical services.
“Something like this also allows for other emergency services, whether it be police, whether it be fire, paramedics to deal with urgent matters,” she said.
ANCHOR is among the growing number of alternative response services emerging across Canada. The community-centric services place people with lived experience and specialized de-escalation training on the frontlines.
APTN took a look at where they’re unfolding across the country.
Toronto’s Indigenous-led crisis response
In Toronto, Saige McMahon oversees the Indigenous-led crisis response through the Toronto Community Crisis Service (TCCS).
The TCCS launched as a pilot in 2022 and expanded citywide in September of this year.
“This type of work really came out of…advocacy that had happened for years from Black and Indigenous mostly communities,” McMahon said.
The Indigenous-led response is an 85-person, mobile response crew dispatched to non-emergency crisis calls. It’s steered by the Toronto-based Indigenous community organization, 2-Spirited People of the 1st Nations.
McMahon said the service was primarily developed to offer a community-based, non-police response to mental health calls.
“Our community really needed a response that is understanding of historical and colonial violence, that is culturally informed, and that can meet folks where they’re at,” she said. “When we look at for example missing and murdered Indigenous women and two-spirit people and girls, our communities are quite under-policed, but then we also look and see that Indigenous peoples are actually overrepresented in incarceration.”
Since expanding city-wide, she said the response from the community has been heartwarming.
“We’ve heard from folks that say it feels like a nice warm hug from a family member coming to support them,” she said. “That the culturally-informed support services have really allowed them to access supports in a way they never have before.”
Manitoba’s alternative response
In Winnipeg, the Alternative Response to Citizens in Crisis (ARCC) pairs plainclothes police officers with mental health clinicians like Luci Stebner.
Since launching in 2021, Stebner said the team of four officers and four clinicians have helped over 90 per cent of clients remain in the community, rather than be transferred to emergency departments.
“Before ARCC, police basically had two options: take them to the hospital involuntarily or attend the crisis response centre,” Stebner said over Zoom. “Now, we’re kind of doing that for the clients, going in their own home or space and providing the help right there.”
In October, it was revealed that the Manitoba Government is reviewing the provincial Mental Health Act. A Winnipeg Free Press report found that the NDP government is looking at ways to “de-emphasize the role of police”.
Naline Rampersad, a Manitoba government spokesperson, told APTN the review is still in progress.
Rampersad issued the following statement on mental health responses:
“We recognize the need for an appropriate emergency response from a variety of providers for Manitobans dealing with mental health challenges. This is why our government is funding groups like SABE Peacewalkers, the BearClan, and the Downtown Community Safety Partnership (DCSP). This is in our addition to our commitment to hiring mental health workers and our investments in ARCC.
“We are already coordinating resources with the City of Winnipeg and community groups in ensuring that we are dealing with mental health challenges with dignity and compassion.”
Other provinces take cues
John Hoyles is the executive director of Community Navigation of Eastern Ontario, which runs the Ottawa 2-1-1 line. Since ANCHOR launched, Hoyles said the demand for their services has been through the roof.
“There’s no question that the need is there in terms of the volume of the requests and the volume of the dispatches we’re doing,” Hoyles said over Zoom.
He encouraged governments in other jurisdictions interested in establishing community-led mental health crisis services to “go for it”.
“It is a much better community response to have people with lived experience, people that understand and have really good training on de-escalation,” he said.
Some provinces are already following suit.
In September, Nova Scotia dedicated $3.7 million to a three-year community-based crisis response pilot program in the West Hants municipality.
In a statement sent to APTN, a spokesperson from the Nova Scotia Office of Addictions and Mental Health said the “pilot is expected to soft launch early next year with full implementation later in 2025”.
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