P.E.I. says mobile mental health units are now operational
CBC
P.E.I.'s mobile mental health response service is now active, the province's health minister announced Friday.
Ernie Hudson said three units are now operational, one based in each of P.E.I.'s three counties, and have responded to eight calls since Monday.
The province originally announced it was developing the service with federal funding in 2018.
In January 2021, Health PEI said it was preparing to launch the service that spring, but then management was moved to Medavie Health Services.
On Friday, the health minister told MLAs Medavie will "operationalize" the service but denied that the service had been privatized.
On Monday, the province announced the launch of a new 24-hour phone line to act as a single point of contact for those requiring mental health services. With the mobile units operational, those are now being dispatched as needed in response to distress calls to that line.
The three mobile units operate between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m., seven days a week. Units are staffed by a paramedic and a mental health worker — either a registered nurse or a social worker.
The minister said police will be dispatched to calls as needed to ensure the safety of clients and staff. He said police would travel in their own vehicles. A government spokesperson said police had not been included in any of the eight responses so far this week.
"The service will provide timely access to mental health assessment, treatment, and connection to appropriate ongoing care," Hudson was quoted in a provincial media release.
"One call will provide fulsome, wraparound services for an individual experiencing a mental health crisis and connect them to all the services they need to improve their mental wellbeing."
Government provided media with copies of the contract the province has entered into with Medavie Health Services Inc.
That contract shows the service will have an annual cost of nearly $3 million, with $1.7 million of that going to Health PEI to pay for salaries of registered nurses, social workers and the clinical lead of the program.
Medavie will receive $1.2 million per year, including management fees worth $107,700 per year.
A small town northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has become the unlikely home for hundreds of foreign workers, but many may have to leave the community they've embraced after the end of a federal program put in place to fill gaps in Canada's labour market.
There's mixed reaction in Waterloo to an injuction allowing police to detain, arrest and charge anyone who is participating in unsanctioned street parties in that city this weekend.
Diabetes Canada is excited about Prince Edward Island's new pharmacare deal with the federal government, but hopes the province will reevaluate copays on diabetes supplies, says a senior manager with the organization.
After 26 years of accommodating guests from across the world, Faith Embleton says she and her husband Ken are ready to sell their bed and breakfast.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.
A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.
Premier Susan Holt is defending her decision to not use electricity exports to Maine as leverage against U.S. tariffs, arguing the move might cause long-term pain for New Brunswickers.
Montreal's St. Patrick's Day parade first started on Saint-Paul Street in 1824, and a couple centuries later, this annual tradition is still going strong.
A congregation in Carman, Man., is coming to grips with the loss of their Anglican Lutheran church, a fixture in the community that was ravaged by a fire on Thursday.