The Martlet

Need a phone call to lean on? As of April 1, Vancouver Island’s six crisis lines will be shutting down after budget cuts by the Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA).

Crisis centre organizers are confident that the central line which is to replace them will provide good service for callers — but they say that what will be lost is each crisis line’s impact on its community.

Victoria’s own crisis centre, NEED, has operated for 39 years. It’s staffed by volunteers, as are other crisis lines on the island.

NEED Youth Space Trainer Audrey Badlack says that the greatest loss to Victoria will be the crisis management training NEED offered.

“Lots of undergraduate and graduate students that have looked into this kind of work have come to us and used this training and experience for their future careers,” she explained.

NEED’s 24-hour crisis line will close on Jun. 30. The organization also offered a crisis line service specifically for youth, but they closed that line down in the fall of 2009 in favour of an online chat approach.

“Youth are growing up without telephones being a huge a part for their lives,” said Baldack. “When they want information or when they want to reach out they tend to now go to the Internet.”

The online youth service will stay open, as will NEED’s in-school suicide awareness programs. However, adults will have to call the Nanaimo line.

“The important thing for people to know is that we still exist,” said Baldack. “Community education programs will continue.”

Crisis lines are part of a slew of cuts made following other provincial budget cuts last summer which left health authorities reeling.

“On the one hand, I can understand why they think five or six different crisis lines for Vancouver Island might be more efficiently served by one crisis line, and by not having all those boards of directors and infrastructure,” said Barbara Wilson, executive director of the Citizens’ Counselling Centre. “But I think that they were pretty narrowly looking at the mandate for each crisis line.”

While VIHA can figure out how many resources are used by community crisis lines, they can’t put a number on the ripple effect a crisis line has in the community, she said. Crisis centre volunteers live everyday lives after their volunteer hours are over, taking their enhanced communication skills and deeper understanding of issues like mental illness and depression with them.

“Those [outcomes] are very hard to measure, and therefore VIHA isn’t interested in them,” she said. “But that’s part of what will be lost. And that’s a real shame.”

Citizens’ Counselling is a non-profit working out of Victoria which offers face-to-face counselling and counsellor training.

Wilson said her organization and NEED are complementary services that often provided different opportunities for volunteers.

“What used to happen a lot is after a couple of years at NEED Crisis Line, [volunteers] would say, ‘I want to go meet some of these people I’ve been talking to on the phone.’ And so they would come to Citizens’ Counselling Centre,” she said.

However, Citizens’ Counselling also suffered a fall cut. They have had to cut their volunteer training programs for the coming year.

“So we all lose out on that. This is a funding crisis, and this is a blow to the non-profit sector in general,” she said. “It’s a big one for NEED, because they’ve been around for so long, and they’re so well respected.”

Hopefully, some of the volunteers who would have come to the NEED 24-hour Crisis Line and Citizens’ Counselling will seek out other opportunities, she said

VIHA settled on the Central Vancouver Island Crisis Society in Nanaimo as the organization to take over Island-wide crisis services after reviewing proposals from different crisis lines, which wanted to take on the job.

They’ll be providing decent service to the Island, Wilson said, noting the organization has a strong crisis line, good infrastructure and a good staff.

“What they don’t have, as far as I know, is an ability to train a whole lot of volunteers,” she said.

Because the organization is based in Nanaimo, they don’t have the same kind of population base to draw from, she said.

“So each community that had a crisis line is going to lose out on the community effect,” she said. “And, in Nanaimo, we have no idea how they’ll staff their crisis line, but it’s not likely to be 100 per cent volunteer anymore. They’re likely going to have to go to some sort of hybrid of professional and volunteer.”

“We are very sad that we will not be continuing to be your local crisis and information line,” reads a letter on the NEED website from Acting Executive Director Joyalle Bunyan-Maynard.

The letter goes on to emphasize that there still will be a 24/7 crisis line accessible to them, and to say that the new Island-wide phone number and any other relevant information about the Central Vancouver Island Crisis Line’s new Island-wide operation will be posted on the NEED website (needcrisis.bc.ca) when they become available.

“To all of our current and previous volunteers we wish to express our heartfelt thanks for all of the dedication you have shown to NEED and to NEED callers,” said Bunyan-Maynard. “For almost 39 years, volunteers have been the backbone of this agency, providing compassionate support and understanding to thousands of callers each year. We deeply regret that NEED will no longer have the capacity to train volunteers who then contribute greatly to the mental well being of this geographic region.”