Community safety coordinator Herb Sutton tried his best to sound positive in his monthly monitoring report to council on Monday night.
However, it was clear not all was rosy in his latest report, with hoped-for initiatives having to be pushed back and with even the Hub table facing issues that need addressed.
The Hub model has been a cornerstone of North Battleford’s public safety efforts over the last five years. North Battleford has been an early adopter of the Hub model, after Prince Albert. According to Sutton’s report, the intent of the Hub is to “connect elevated risk to available services, and let those services make those necessary interventions.”
However, “what we are seeing is that even when the services are connected, the elevated risks are not reduced. These are system problems that need to be addressed – that is beyond the scope of the Hub table itself,” Sutton’s written report states.
At council Monday, Sutton said that 463 situations had been brought forward to Hub since it was established five years ago, Sutton told council.
But Sutton made it known he thought that number was too low for the five-year period.
“It can become a bit of a challenge to convince government people, for example, that we need more resources or different resources,” said Sutton.
What’s more, if agencies making referrals to the Hub don’t see the elevated risk lowered, Sutton said, that’s “a little bit of a disincentive to them for making further referrals.”
He said, “I’m just being honest with you, that’s something our Hub table has had a lot of conversation about and that they’re really trying to work with.”
To address the issues, it was agreed by the Hub Steering Committee that it would lead a “reset” initiative with the Hub project.
The thinking is that it is time to look at “what’s been working well, and what kind of changes do we need to think about making.”
No date is set for that to happen yet, but Sutton called it an important piece. He noted the importance of the Hub in addressing one of the city’s five pillars of its community safety strategy: that of “Helping Individuals and Complex Families.”
“The work at the Hub table gets right at the heart of that,” said Sutton. He pledged to keep council posted on those efforts.
Sutton also updated council on the work of the SAGE group – Safety, Acceptance, Guidance, Empowerment.
One of their projects is the coalition project – the multi-government forum. Bonnie Evans has been hired to develop the model to guide the creation and work of the coalition, and they plan to identify key stakeholders from the four levels of government and invite them into the design of the process. The goal is to have the coalition done by the end of April.
But Sutton told council there has been no news release to the media yet on this project.
The reason, he explained, is because they haven’t actually engaged the Indigenous community and Indigenous leadership yet.
“It seemed kind of counterproductive that we would say we were going to get into this coalition, where were going to very effectively involve the Indigenous community, but when we put out a media release they’re not involved in any way, shape or form.”
The plan is to get “all the right people” to the table, including Indigenous leaders, before they collectively put together a media release. Mayor Ryan Bater responded that was the responsible approach.
Finally, a Public Safety Canada - Federal Provincial Territorial Collaborative Approach workshop scheduled for Feb 28-Mar 1 has been postponed until May at the earliest.
The reason, Sutton explained, was because the first list put together for the meeting from Public Safety Canada included a number of policy analysts and grant funders.
“That’s not who we intended to have at the meeting,” said Sutton. “We wanted to have decision makers there.”
He explained a major objective of the workshop was to challenge government personnel to be prepared to make systemic changes, and the need to get services into the hands of people in the community in the most vulnerable circumstances.
“Quite frankly, I don’t want to talk to a policy analyst or a grant funder about that. I’d rather talk to somebody from government who can influence and change the systems in government… who can better meet the needs of the persons just described.”
The response from organizers was to agree to the request, but they also asked for more time to get those people in place and that has been agreed to.
