ASK Salt Spring: Answered - Ep. 45 David Norget

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

Damian Inwood talks to David Forget, co-ordinator for the Mental Wellness Initiative on issues facing the unhoused on Salt Spring Island.

You're listening to episode 45 of Ask Salt Spring Answered in which we talk to David Norgat who is the coordinator of the Mental Wellness Initiative here on Salt Spring Island. Right, I'm here with David Norgat who is the coordinator for the Mental Wellness Initiative here on Salt Spring Island. Right, I'm here with David Noggett, who's the coordinator for the Mental Wellness Initiative, and we've just been in Ask Salt Spring for a two-hour session talking about how things are progressing on Salt Spring and pretty interesting discussion, I think, David. First off, I want to just talk to you about a comment that you made about some of the myths that circulate on Salt Spring with regards to what people are doing here to help the unhoused and people with mental health issues. And you said that two of the things are you're accused of enabling them and that you're encouraging more people to come here because of that. Yeah, and with the latter, I would say, you know, there's this idea not only that more people,

more transient people is often the term, will be encouraged to come here, and also that we're supporting people that are transient. And actually, there are long term community members that are we're talking about here, that are being supported. And so how do we as a community want to support each other as a community? So this is not about people coming in from away. And then yes, the question of enabling the, you know, really people who are suffering from substance use, many of whom are unhoused, not everyone, they are, have dealt with trauma, and they didn't get to choose that trauma. And really for any of us to judge how somebody else is dealing with their trauma without knowing anything about it and not even necessarily being willing to understand more

about it just is it's not about enabling it's actually about strengthening so there's just not the right understanding of perspective on that and context and those who do engage and hear the stories they have a much fuller sense and the compassion tends to come up there so just to say enabling is just it's way off the mark the mental wellness initiative and efforts of others in the community it's all about strengthening each other and strengthening community and strengthening the possibility for these individuals to change their lives. And I think we've all had, hopefully we've all had experiences of being strengthened, being supported, being cared for, having basic needs met. So this is really about dignity. There, that was long-winded.

Yeah, no, it's a good point point and i think one of the things that came out in my mind anyway was that um until you actually get to know somebody and have a relationship with them you can't relate to them and the fact that that people are perhaps afraid of people they encounter in centennial park or or, that they will never ever really understand them unless they get to contact them. Yeah, in the same vein, don't speak to me about that unless you have gone and grown the relationship. Victoria was one of the people who spoke, and as being an ambassador and learning the comfort of connecting and just realizing they had, you know, whatever was going on for Victoria, but that they understood so much more and actually feel this incredible warmth to members of this community

who are unhoused or insecurely housed to the point where they were in Victoria and talked to somebody on the street and engaged. They would never have done that. There just was a greater understanding and probably confidence and also shedding whatever was in the way. I think that's shedding stigma fundamentally. Right. Now talking about the ambassadors, I think the comment was made that, you know, the program is steady, but is not growing too much. Is there a way forward on that? I mean, I know it's not your bailiwick exactly, but what do you see as far as the ambassador program goes?

Yeah, it is part of my bailiwick. It's definitely in the mix. We have five ambassadors that are incredibly strong and committed, and then we have some on the side that are helping out on occasion which is great um we recognize that people are busy and it's and this is also summertime so it's been a little quieter in that regard uh yeah we continue to have interest expressed we continue to train people at least which is all part of it as well. It's like a garden. Sometimes it has to go slowly and the long-term careful investment is really important. So I like the

garden analogy. Right. Now what's next for the mental wellness initiative? I know you were talking about interagency meetings that you're having. How do you see this going forward now? Well, there's a lot of aspects of that. Yeah, definitely building partnerships, building connections. We're stronger as a community working together. What are the mechanisms for doing that in a good way? The interagency piece that I mentioned was Island Health, Umbrella, the Mental Wellness Initiative, and supporting peer support outreach workers, IWAVE as well. They lost their person more recently, so that's still to be built in and check in about their interests. But working together and supporting those peer support workers

and ultimately community members and their needs and how to remove the systemic barriers with that. But really, we also talked about partnership in a lot of ways. I don't care who that organization is. We're connected. How do we support each other? And how do we better serve whaten the needs in the community and so that they don't start popping up

and pinballing around the community and service providers. Yeah. Now, the churches play a big part in this too, don't they? They do, yeah. And there's some great efforts from various churches to engage around food, for example, and care. So I see more, that's one of the encouraging pieces, not just churches, but just community groups coming together. And that absolutely is what the Mental Wellness Initiative is intending, you know, co-creating a community of care and belonging.

That means doing that together and working together in good ways. Yeah. I think about the last hour of the discussion revolved around the warming space in the wintertime, and I know that Gail Baker is very concerned about what's going to happen if we have a really hard winter this year and where can people go if they don't have a have a home or if they're living rough or whatever um now they talked about the united church meadow and

also the phoenix school site as a couple of possibilities where where is that right now do you know i mean well it's it's just in discussion point of view i would back it up a little bit like this absolutely relates to how do we as a community care for the issues and needs for all our community members. And so the warming space is just one example. People who are insecurely or unhoused need a place to convene. There's simple things like a place to dry out their stuff, get out of the rain. It's not just about warmth. Certainly there's cold weather, a place to play a game, a place to connect in with emergency supplies. So really it's very much in the works. It keeps

being an issue because it is an issue. The needs still to be there so how do we hold that as a community in a good way so the it's great that uh the the conversations are happening uh gary's been gary holman's been great around that gail baker's been great about that um kaj and go with the two and society they're just in salt spring safely, it's just we need to have the conversations. And they were saying that when they had the warming space before, it was a very positive thing for the community in that the number of emergency calls dropped, the number of crises at Lady Minto Hospital dropped, and, of course, people got together

and were able to get comfort from socializing, which is a very important part of it, right? Absolutely. I sat in that space a number of times. And I think that's where I made connection to CADGEN, as well as other community members. And I saw great conversations and great connections. I work in mental health and yeah, I could see the strengthening factors of it for sure. So it is a good news story even though there were challenges with it. And so how do we address the challenge aspect? And one of the challenge aspect

was we weren't working together. So how do we address that? Yeah, and that brings me to another point that came up was like, what happens when we don't come together? And the answer is it gets chaotic, right? Yeah. People are really suffering and they're suffering more and maybe they go into a mental health crisis and they impact a business or the first responders or ambulance or the hospital, um, or they're, they come to the shelter unhappy, whatever the case may be. So if we attend to needs and we all have them, then we're in a better place. Things calm down. So I loved Katjan's story about just the notice of changes. The other part I really heard

him mention is people want to help and they had a place where they could go to offer food or offer supplies or uh yeah there's just deeper possibilities now we're talking about good things right now towards the end you talked about a couple of initiatives um reach out salt spring can you tell me a bit about that? Yeah, so the Mental Wellness Initiative is focused on three aspects, three programs. One is the Ambassador Program, which we've already mentioned. The other is Peer Support Outreach. And the third is Reach Out Salt Spring.

So it's where professionals, practitioners on the island donate 10 sessions a year to those who wouldn't otherwise be able to access them. And so right now we have 110 donated sessions. Our target is to get 200. And then this makes it accessible to people. And we've done a soft launch of it where we've assigned two individuals in the community, two practitioners.

And yeah, we're excited about it it and what kind of things are we talking about here massage therapy or yeah there's uh two body workers most of the people are mental health clinicians so therapists counselors uh i don't think we have a psychologist, but, you know, therapists, counselors. There is one person that's offering yoga and awareness, you know, building awareness because to connect in with our needs and our bodies is really important. Yeah. Okay. And the other one you mentioned was you've got 20 donated phones, I think, brand new phones that people can access so they can call home and that kind of thing. What's the story there? So this is through Spark BC, reaching out to myself as part of the Salt Spring Health Advancement Network,

and we're linking it into the Mental Wellness Initiative. The program is really to connect insecurely or unhoused individuals with loved ones and providing technology so the phones it's a simple phone pretty basic but it has 100 uh canada anywhere minutes and it has some you know kind of a month supply of data, people can pay for more to extend it. And so these phones are slowly getting handed out to people in need, not just anyone who wants a phone, obviously, but in particular, for insecurely or unhoused individuals. And we've handed out, we're about to hand out our fifth phone. So that's exciting, too. Have you heard anything back from them, the people who've had the phones yet? Is it too early? I haven't heard anything back.

It's usually through somebody else, so we might not hear from that individual, but certainly the people who are making sure they're getting the phones are appreciative or they express appreciation from that person. So it's fairly anecdotal in that way. Right. Now you're going to be having a meeting shortly, I think, with some of the LCC commissioners. What's that about? It's looking at the warming space and Phoenix property, what might be possible, what might make sense, and how do we do this in a good way to be caring for primarily needs of

community members because they exist and they're real and it also supports wellness and other agencies but also yeah mutual needs of care for the space and care for inter interacting with other uses of that space so just how to set it up in a good way, which is really important. Okay, well, thanks for coming in, David. And you've been listening to Ask Salt Spring Answered on cheer.fm, the voice of the Southern Gulf Islands.

Thanks so much.