Funding in BC to meet the demand for first-language mental health and counselling services
Credit to Author: Canadian Immigrant| Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 13:03:04 +0000
Newcomers, both adults and youth, are faced with many changes, challenges and losses that come with immigrating to a new country. Many also come to Canada to escape war, injustice and trauma and often need mental health support and counselling. There are just not enough mental health services, especially accessible, low-cost services for the growing need. In addition, accessing mental health services presents additional obstacles due to language and cultural barriers, on top of financial ones.
DIVERSEcity Community Resources Society, a registered charity based in Surrey, BC, has been awarded a Community Counselling Grant from the provincially-funded Community Action Initiative (CAI), designed to increase community-based non-profit service organizations’ ability to help more people at the local level. The organization has a counselling services department that has been dedicated to providing free clinical counselling services and substance use counselling to the region’s diverse and marginalized populations for 22 years. Support is provided in many first languages, including Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, Farsi and English.
The three-year Community Counselling Grant will allow DIVERSEcity to reduce wait times for its existing mental health and substance use services by funding additional staff resources so it can better meet the needs of the fast-growing population in Surrey and its surrounding areas.
According to Judy Darcy, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions: “For far too long, people in BC have struggled to find accessible, affordable counselling and other mental health and substance use supports. This new, multi-year funding is a vital component of ensuring that the ability to get help should not depend on the size of your bank account or where you live in the province.”
“We are grateful that the provincial Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions is continuing to make a positive impact in our communities by providing organizations like ours the capacity to provide much-needed counselling support to under served and hard-to-reach individuals with complex mental health needs. ” says Neelam Sahota, CEO, DIVERSEcity. ““In 2018–2019 alone, we helped 2,100 clients through our counselling services at DIVERSEcity. This funding will allow us to expand the reach of our free, culturally informed mental health services so we can help even more people.”
For more information about DIVERSEcity’s counselling services, visit www.dcrs.ca/counselling.