INNISFAIL - Town council has approved $151,196 in Family and Community Support Services (FCSS) funding for six local social service organizations.
However, no money was allotted this year for subsidized mental health counselling, but the town, through the FCSS Advisory Board, is joining an advocacy campaign to senior levels of government to increase program support and funding for what is increasingly considered a "crisis" throughout the province.
"Mental health is a huge issue but the magnitude of the issue cannot be sustained with just FCSS dollars," said Karen Bradbury, the town's community and social development coordinator who made an FCSS funding presentation to town council on Jan. 9. "The FCSS Advisory Board is looking at other ways we can advocate for further funding and an increase in programs in the area of mental health.
She noted there are initiatives at the federal level to increase targeted mental health funding that would support municipalities across the country that are trying to deal with what is considered a "crisis."
As for the advisory board's funding recommendations, council approved allocating $35,000 to Innisfail's Big Brothers Big Sisters of Prairies to Peaks, another $30,000 to the Boys & Girls Club Innisfail program, $45,000 for programming with the Chinook's Edge School Division, $3,600 to the Henday Association for Lifelong Learning, $32,596 to the Innisfail Seniors Drop-In Society and $5,000 to Pathways Home Family Counselling.
The money allocated to Pathways is not for subsidized counselling, said Bradbury.
Patrick Gleason, chair of the FCSS Advisory Board and the regional representative for the FCSS Alberta Association, said allocation decisions were "very difficult" for the board as it had a total of $320,500 in requests, including one for $75,000 from Summit Psychology, which received a FCSS grant of $5,000 last year for subsidized counselling for financially challenged citizens needing support due to the long and deepening recession.
"That was a big, big part of our discussion and certainly we know there are municipalities (and) FCSS had a big meeting in October in regard to that (mental health)," said Gleason on the issue of mental health funding support. "That is not only a municipal issue. It is a provincial issue. It is a national issue. We thought we need to have more discussions about it but it was beyond our financial scope."
He said part of his board's "energy" is to move forward in an advocacy role to find out more on what is happening in the province on the mental health issue, and what the end result will be in assisting challenged citizens in Innisfail.
Gleason said he was attending an FCSS Alberta Association meeting in Edmonton last week with a plan to address the provincial board on the mental health issue, and what the association intends to do on the file and what "conversations" the association needs to have with legislative representatives.
Karen Bradbury, the town's community and social development coordinator
"Mental health is a huge issue but the magnitude of the issue cannot be sustained with just FCSS dollars."
