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The Downtown Sudbury Business Improvement Area (BIA) hopes to launch a $250,000 Welcoming Streets pilot program that would hire two mental health support workers who can respond to calls instead of police.
Kyle Marcus, the northern Ontario BIA’s managing director, said other municipalities have had similar programs, which allows business owners to call the support workers instead of police if someone is having a mental health crisis.
“So if someone, say, is having a mental episode on a patio, or sleeping in a doorway, right now,our only recourse is to call police,” he said.
“These aren’t, you know, traditional police issues.”
Similar program
The Guelph Community Health Centre had a five-month Welcoming Street Initiative pilot program that had 670 interactions with people in crisis and responded to 145 calls for support from businesses during that time.
Marcus said the program helps municipalities use their police services more effectively and gives appropriate support to businesses.
The support workers would also train business owners on how to better respond to vulnerable people in crisis situations.
“Once we start educating our population, our membership, then we see a whole different level of engagement and involvement and empathy and compassion,” Marcus said.
I think it is a good alternative to calling police or bylaw.– Kaela Pelland, Réseau Access Network
Because of the program’s cost, Marcus said the Downtown Sudbury BIA is meeting with partners to help cover the costs. Those partners include the Greater Sudbury Police Service.
If the funding falls into place, he said the support workers could be out in the community by the summer.
Kaela Pelland, the director of peer engagement with Réseau Access Network in Sudbury, a non-profit organization dedicated to harm reduction, said she supports the proposed pilot program.
“I think it is a good alternative to calling police or bylaw [officers] and I think that it may connect folks who are in mental health crises, or folks who are suffering to appropriate services.”
Pelland said the $250,000 price tag is reasonable if you take the cost of calling police or security services to respond to calls into account.
But she added the program would not address the root causes of homelessness and mental health problems in the community.
“I don’t think that it is going to make up for the fact that there are not equitable mental health resources for people,” Pelland said.
“It isn’t going to solve the housing crisis that we’re dealing with.”
Morning North6:58New program proposes to call in mental health support instead of police to resolve conflict in Sudbury’s downtown core
Sudbury’s downtown business improvement association is developing a social service to address conflict in the city core. Managing director Kyle Marcus says he’s hoping to hire a couple of mental health support workers which could be called instead of police in the event of conflict involving people on the street.
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