Teams offering mental-health and substance-use services to children and youth are being expanded to seven more school districts, including Nanaimo-Ladysmith and Port Alberni, Mental Health Minister Jennifer Whiteside announced Thursday.
The Integrated Child and Youth or ICY teams are intended to connect children, youth and families to counselling, peer and cultural supports — meeting them in their schools, homes or communities.
“The point of these teams really is to meet children and youth and families where they are at … where they feel safe and comfortable,” Whiteside said from the Mission Youth Centre.
The expansion will bring the total number of teams to 12, with the province committed to bringing them to 20 school districts by 2024, to be fully operational by 2025. None of the 12 teams so far is in south Vancouver Island.
Team members might include clinical counsellors connected to schools, youth substance-use clinicians, child and youth mental-health clinicians, Indigenous elders or Indigenous support workers, as well as family and peer supports.
The multi-disciplinary teams work together to provide services including assessment and screening, consultation and therapeutic services to children up to age 19.
About 75 per cent of serious mental-health issues emerge before the age of 25, according to the Mental Health and Addictions Ministry. In B.C., nearly 13 per cent of children ages four to 18 are affected by mental-health disorders, and 44 per cent of them receive services, it said.
The new multidisciplinary teams are being added in Nanaimo-Ladysmith, Okanagan-Shuswap (Salmon Arm), Pacific Rim (Port Alberni), Powell River, Fraser-Cascade (Hope, Harrison, Agassiz), Kootenay-Columbia (Trail), and Mission school districts.
Whiteside said the teams co-ordinate mental health, wellness and substance-use care in schools and in the community. Whiteside did not fully explain Thursday why there are no teams in south Vancouver Island or if any are planned as the program expands.
She said only that the province works closely with school districts to identify their needs and ability to build and implement the teams.
ICY teams are already in place in Richmond, Coast Mountains (Terrace and Hazelton), Okanagan-Similkameen (Oliver and area), Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows and the Comox Valley school districts, for a total of 12.
The ICY teams are not just for public schools — they also work with First Nations-operated schools, independent schools, francophone schools, alternative schools and those not in school within a school-district boundary.
The Mental Health and Addictions Ministry says children and youth and their families can connect with ICY teams through early-years and child-care services, school staff, primary-care, mental-health and substance-use services, Foundry centres and Indigenous-led organizations.
