Vancouver announces $2.8M in funding and expects to hire 58 mental health nurses

Feb 5 2023, 10:55 pm

The City of Vancouver and the Province have announced recommendations for a $2.8 million grant to Vancouver Coastal Health from the City to scale up mental health crisis response services. 

According to Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim, most of the funding ($2.5 million) will be used to hire 58 mental health workers. 

This funding follows the City’s decision to approve the plan of hiring 200 additional frontline public safety workers, including 100 new additional Vancouver Police Department (VPD) officers and 100 new Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) mental health nurses.

The mayor added that the grant will “enable Vancouver coastal health to increase the capacity of the highly successful Car 87/88 [“Mental Health Cars”] police partnership program.”

“It will go to grow the capacity of this sort of outreach team leads partnership services and will establish non-police de-escalation services for individuals who are not in high level of crisis.”

Sim added this grant request is just the first phase of the program. 

“Future phases of work may include additional proactive responses, such as mental health outreach, integrated case management and services to support the integration of people recovering from crisis into the community,” Ken explained. 

This annual grant to VCH will grow to $8 million “and may be used for more proactive and preventative services over time,” the City said. 

With files from Kenneth Chan

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