On November 19, 2013, the BC Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, spoke to an audience of about 100 youth workers from the Victoria Region. The talk took place at the Greek Orthodox Hall on Elk Lake Road. Ms. Turpel-Lafond’s talk focused in on a recent study released by her office entitled Still Waiting: First Hand Experience with Youth Mental Health Services in B.C.
The BC Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, speaks to local youth service providers. To her left is Brian Hill, one of the researchers of the report on youth mental health, and, on the right, is Jennifer Au, an advocate for the RCYBC.
The message of the report is that youth mental health in BC is fractured to the point of being dysfunctional. Many of the promises made by the Ministry of Children and Family Development in their 2003 five year plan, Child and Youth Mental Plan, have been unfulfilled. Many of the complaints noted in the report where well-known to the service providers in the audience who struggle daily to find mental health resources that actually work for youth. These complaints include long-wait lists, lack of follow-up with family members or guardians, lack of specialized acute care hospitals for youth with mental health problems. As pointed out in the presentation, while the government may think they have provided services for youth, such services in reality don’t exist or don’t work. If mental health was understood on the same level as we do physical health, as for example with diabetes, we would create a much more friendly footprint of how to access treatment without shame and denial.
Ms. Turpel-Lafond argued that we need to do a lot of work to create a functional system of response if we want to help our youth make healthy transitions into adulthood. How can we build and maintain quality communities to do this? The reason for wanting such a system is to prevent the inevitable crisis of poverty, crime and social welfare that are the long-term costs of NOT helping youth connect with suitable mental health supports in the short-term. The Representative was emphatic that systems of response meet the needs of the youth where they are at, so they feel empowered and participate in the systems they will use. “It’s way easier to blame young people than to help them. Blame is our default and it’s destructive.” There should be a system of response in place that works so that there is “no wrong door.”
Many thanks to the Representative for her strong advocacy in the area of improving provincial youth care and her strong intention to make it work better for those who need it the most.
Many thanks to Youth Services Providers Network and the Youth Housing Network, especially Tara Skobel, for facilitating this event.