IHA AND FOUR PILLARS COALITION ON COMMON GROUND

A representative of the Interior Health Authority dropped some good news
and bad news on the Central Okanagan Four Pillars Coalition during its
monthly meeting on Thursday morning.

The good news is that the mental health and addiction services division of
the IHA has been conducting its own review of the services it offers and it
coincides with the conclusions the coalition has been reaching.

"We're on the same page," said Pat Townsley, addictions manager for the
Okanagan Health Service Area, a sub-region of the health authority that
includes Kelowna.

Townsley told the coalition that her division has been working to integrate
the two areas of mental health and addictions services for the last two
years in the face of evidence that shows many addicts also have mental
health problems, especially amongst the homeless at the street level.

"One of the things we know is that between 40 and 55 per cent of addicts
also have a concurrent mental health disorder," said Townsley. "Twenty-nine
per cent of psychiatric illnesses also present with substance abuse
disorders and 70 per cent of clients who access community addictions
programs also access community mental health services. Clearly there is an
overlap."

The result of that work is contained within a report called Seamless
Services, written by psychiatrist Dr. Don Duncan.

The report concludes that both substance abuse disorders and mental health
diagnosis must be treated together rather than in isolation.

"We should assume that clients are going to be struggling to manage both
issues," said Townsley.

"As a result, services must meet their needs instead of forcing them to
access different programs for different needs."

Townsley said the idea that a client must already be straight to access
services or that difficult clients will be excluded has been dropped.

"In situations where the client has high needs in both addiction services
and mental health services, we must make the extra effort to engage them
rather than abandoning them to their fate," she added.

"What we did before if a client relapsed was tell them they weren't ready,
that they needed to hit rock bottom first."

The bad news, from the perspective of the coalition, is that there is no
funding available to provide additional programs beyond what is already there.

"I don't have a big pot of money behind my desk," said Townsley.

"We have to make decisions about what we can and can't have."

Instead, Townsley said adjustments will have to be made to existing
programs within the current budget to adapt to those changes.

Kelowna city councillor Sharon Shepherd, who acts as council's liaison to
the coalition, said she's pleased to see that addiction services seems
finally to have found a permanent home under the ministry of health.

"That's been an issue for many years. It got bounced from ministry to
ministry and nothing seemed to change," she said.

Shepherd said she was happy to hear a reinforcement from Townsley about
some of the conclusions the coalition has drawn during the last year.

"We need to be on the same page in order to move forward," she said.

"Of course, there's still lots more work to be done to identify where the
gaps are and who is going to fund what."