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Vital People: Grant allows counselling centre to boost service for families

Increased and timely funding now allows the Vancouver Island Counselling Centre for Immigrants and Refugees to increase the number of clients it is able to serve during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Adrienne Carter, co-founder of the Vancouver Island Counselling Centre for Immigrants and Refugees.

Increased and timely funding now allows the Vancouver Island Counselling Centre for Immigrants and Refugees to increase the number of clients it is able to serve during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The centre has received both a community grant as well as a contribution from the Rapid Relief Fund to provide services to Immigrants and refugees affected by anxiety, depression, traumatic experiences, difficulties in adjusting to a new life in Canada and troubled relationships.

The mental health counselling is delivered by qualified registered clinical counsellors with experience working with multicultural issues. Clients are paired with counsellors who either speak their language or with interpreters.

But what sets the Vancouver Island Counselling Centre apart from other organizations is their treatment model, which emphasizes the treatment of the whole family instead of just an individual.

“There are different types of counselling. We offer a client-centered model in which we see the whole family speaking their language,” said Adrienne Carter, a Registered Clinical Therapist and director of services at the centre she co-founded. “You can express yourself in Spanish, Arabic and a number of other languages.”

The centre, with a cadre of 15 counsellors on call, support between 90 and 100 clients at any one time. If needed, they are joined by a psychiatrist.

Many of the people that the centre serves - Carter points out that not all are newcomers - have experienced some sort of trauma prior to their new life in Canada.

“They present with some serious symptoms, somewhat akin to Post-traumatic stress disorder,” said Carter. “This can manifest itself in domestic violence, violent outbreaks depression or suicidal tendencies.”

She said that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated some of the underlying trauma.

“Before the pandemic, you could go out when things got tough at home you could simply go out - you can’t now.”

She says that the counselling program has been forced to adapt and is now engaged in telehealth counselling with clients.

“Connecting by phone has helped out-of-town clients a lot. Those living in Nanaimo, for example, now don’t have to travel to Victoria, to find parking and so forth, to attend a meeting,” said Carter. “We are learning a lot from the experience. We did not miss a beat during the transition and the telehealth services were up and running in 48 hours. We’re certainly not rushing back to the old model even after things return to normal.”

Due to their success, the Vancouver Island Counselling Centre for Immigrants and Refugees plans to retain the hybrid services even after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

An indirect benefit from the changes is an increase of clients as they are not geographically constrained.

“We recently got a referral for service from Saskatchewan,” she said.

Funding from the Victoria Foundation allowed the centre to pay their counsellors for the first time earlier this year. The on-call staff had been working pro bono since the program started in 2015.

“The community grant as well Rapid Relief funding ensures that entire families who are really hurting will get the accessible, healthful and gentle mental- health counselling they need together in a timely manner,” Carter said.

For more information, go to viccir.org.