One youth safety program in the capital region is suspended because the Greater Victoria School Board believes students and staff don’t feel safe when police visit schools.
Another – the two-person Mobile Youth Services Team hailed by everyone for doing outstanding work in the same field – is running out of money and curtailing operations to two days a week.
The first point of contact for young people in trouble is vital in setting the tone for how help is provided. Now two key outfits that serve that role are either suspended or curtailed.
A new report this week vividly describes how important that function is. It focuses on MYST, but the observations apply to the school police liaison officer controversy as well.
Rebeccah Nelems, an independent academic who studies delivery of social services, was commissioned by the Victoria Family Court and Youth Justice Committee to review the MYST program because of the budget crunch it is facing.
Her 12-page report said there has been an “exponential increase” locally in the number of youth dealing with serious threats to their well-being.
The opioid crisis, homelessness, mental-health challenges and surging gang activity have created an “urgent crisis with respect to youth gang exploitation,” she concluded.
Online harassment, sexual exploitation and trafficking, weapons cases and the targeting of younger children are all problems that are getting worse.
“While gang violence and youth exploitation are not new in Greater Victoria, Lower Mainland gangs have increasingly entrenched themselves in the region in the last 5-7 years …” Nelems wrote.
The school board earlier downplayed similar warnings from Victoria Police Chief Del Manak about the gang threat as a reason to reinstate the school police liaison officer program, stating: “In the absence of historical data from police it is not possible to determine whether recent reports of gang recruitment or other criminal activities represent a change in activity.”
It’s time to acknowledge things have changed.
MYST consists of two highly regarded people — veteran youth counsellor Mia Golden and VicPD Const. Gord Magee, who was awarded a Governor General’s exemplary service medal earlier this year.
Before their hours were curtailed this week, they provided 24/7 coverage and handled a caseload of 250 vulnerable youth, on a budget of a few hundred thousand dollars.
It’s considered unique in how it crosses all jurisdictional lines and deals personally and directly with youth.
It’s relatively low-profile, but first responders of all sorts throughout the region are very familiar with it and call them routinely.
Nelems recommends devising a more secure ongoing budget model from all levels of government, and hiking it to the $700,000-a-year range to double the size of the team.
If politicians run short of things to talk about in the current election campaign, the gaps in the safety net for the increasing number of children who are getting into serious trouble are worth bringing up.
The two different programs need two different solutions and both of them require political action.
Restoring school police liaison officers would involve the school board backing down from its ill-considered stance.
The NDP government ordered the board last week to create a new safety plan. It’s an indirect way of guiding them in that direction. The directive arose from months of frustration after private urging and public demands from municipal leaders failed.
Putting MYST on a secure, enhanced footing requires just what Nelems recommended — a new, region-wide funding mechanism.
The next government after the election could guide both fixes.
If the new safety plan expected by Nov. 15 doesn’t include school police liaison officers, the province’s message to the board should be two words: “Try again.”
Creating a new funding model could also be arranged in fairly short order.
NDP Leader David Eby backed such programs this week and said his government would “support these kinds of liaison programs.”
None of the other contenders at this point are going to disagree with that.
Restoring school police liaison officer would take some pressure off MYST, since they became the first point of contact after it shut down.
Golden, with 10 years experience on the team and years before that in the same field, told report author Nelems that “the number of youth who are becoming addicted to substances and being sex trafficked and exploited is staggering.
“We cannot keep up.”
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