A pair of Prince George area organizations continue to answer the call of duty during the pandemic’s surging fourth wave.
The Crisis Centre for Northern BC has seen a 33% uptick in calls over the past year.
Luckily, the group was able to secure some government funding to hire a few more people to keep up with the increasing demand for the phone lines.
Executive Director Sandra Boulianne told MyPGNow.com it’s been a big help.
“That’s been a real blessing to our service. The more people we have on our lines, the more calls we are able to answer. Our call answer rate has improved since then.
In July of 2020, the Ministry of Health provided one-time funding of $690,000 to provincial crisis lines to help respond to the increased demand.
In addition, Foundry in Prince George continues to see a steady stream of youth accessing their in-person and virtual services.
According to the province’s Pathway to Hope progress report, 12,274 unique youth accessed Foundry services in 2020/21 for a total of nearly 52-thousand visits.
That’s a sharp increase from the 2019/20 fiscal year where 10,868 unique youth dropped by, which led to an accumulated total of 40,974 visits.
PG Foundry Manager, Carmen De Menech stated the volume of foot traffic hasn’t slowed down much.
“We have continued to offer in-person services as much as possible because that is what the community has told us that is needed, required and preferred.”
“We did see a dip at the beginning of the pandemic as people were doing their best to keep themselves safe. We have seen a pickup though and our numbers have been quite consistent when it comes to youth accessing services at Foundry.”
Two more Foundry centres in Burns Lake and Williams Lake are currently under development.
Under the BC Government’s Pathway to Hope progress report, which was unveiled this week, expanding Foundry centres is one of the key points of the three-year action plan.
Other major points include establishing more mental health supports in schools, expanding First Nation-run treatment centres as well as creating virtual counselling for post-secondary students.
When it comes to overdose emergency response, the province noted 1.37 million visits were made to overdose prevention or supervised consumption sites.
According to the government, nearly 71-hundred overdoses were survived at these sites with no fatalities.
A link to the Pathways to Hope report can be found here.