North needs more live-in treatment for children, says director of mental health agency

Children's Mental Health Ontario has released a new report on wait lists and wait times for children and youth mental health in the province. 

According to the report, Kids Can't Wait, more than 70% of mental health and addiction problems start  before the age of 17.

Mark Fraser is the director of clinical and client services for Compass, the lead agency for child and youth mental health services in Sudbury and Manitoulin. 

Fraser says that hands down, live-in treatment is the biggest need in the north because some of the children with the greatest need must travel to southern Ontario to get help.

Greatest need comes at a big cost

Live-in treatment monitors mental health 24 hours a day, seven days a week. "It's probably one of the most expensive services out there, and, as a result, we simply do not have the funding up here in the north to have a facility," said Fraser.

"We have an acute hospital that deals with acute situations," explains Fraser. "Live-in treatment could be months — six to eight months. It comes at a big cost."

Fraser says that the wait times for children and youth in Sudbury and Manitoulin has historically been very similar to the provincial average of roughly 67 days. "Over the last two years we've experienced some significant decreases in wait times, averaging around 32 days."

Constantly working to reduce wait times

"But even one day waiting for services is not good enough," said Fraser. "So we're constantly working towards further reducing wait times."

Fraser credits the wait times in Sudbury and Manitoulin to mindSPACE, a service that was launched in 2016. mindSPACE offers free and confidential mental health services without an appointment for children and youth under 18. There are two locations — one on Frood Road in Sudbury and the other on Centre Street in Espanola.

"The program is also accessible at school where youth are identified by teachers, by mental health leads, or self-refer and they're able to walk in and seek services," said Fraser.

Fraser added that mindSPACE staff have approaches and tools that enable them to match the child's needs with the level of service, and more often than not they have more than one session. 

"After several sessions, if the need is still there, they have access to other counselling and therapy or a more intensive service, possibly a day treatment program," said Fraser.

Fraser says there's always more that can be done. "Right now, as far as the budget goes, we're focusing on wait times and just getting people through the door,"

He adds that a small provincial group is being looked at to examine different models of live-in treatment to see how a sustainable, effective and efficient system could be developed.