The City of Kamloops has taken another step towards the creation of a Situation Table to try to proactively deal with crime, substance abuse, and recovery.

Acting Community Services Manager Will Beatty says the City will look for grant funding to implement the provincial initiative, which aims to bring together representatives of a number of social and community service agencies on a weekly basis.

“It is more a diversion tool offering immediate supports to people that need them,” Beatty told Radio NL.

“It can be less impactful for policing services, it can be less impactful for health services as well when those needs are met immediately for people who are going down that wrong path.”

In a report to the City’s Safety and Security Committee, Beatty said core participants around a Situation Table often include people in the fields of policing, education, mental health, addictions, Indigenous and culturally specific services, housing, income assistance, health, community-based organizations, victim services, as well as child and family services.

He says members around the table will need to navigate privacy implications in order to identify – in real time – which supports are needed during an intervention.

“An agency bringing a person’s case to the table and working with all of those agencies to work out a plan within 72 hours to make sure that we can either break somebody’s impacts from committing a crime or becoming homeless,” Beatty said. “There are all sorts of elevated risk factors that come into play for the scoring for these Situation Tables.”

“The province has worked out a privacy impact assessment and allowed for non disclosure agreements to be signed by all the agencies so that when you deal with Person ABC in their scenario, all of the information can be shared in real time, so you can make immediate impacts showing those elevated risk factors.”

He estimates the City’s ask of the province would be in the range of $500,000 to $750,000, with the money going towards training a staff member to ensure the program runs successfully.

“The real need here is again that privacy impact assessment, the fact that it is recognized as a collaborative public safety program within the province and we can continue to share public safety information with public safety professionals in community,” Beatty said.

The so-called Situation Tables were first launched in 2015 in Surrey, with the province now providing funding for them in 20 different towns and cities around the province.

A 2018 review of Surrey’s program said while it was an effective practice, there were some drawbacks, in part due to the “additional work” for partners, many of whom are already operating at or beyond capacity.

“The effectiveness of a Situation Table intervention is limited if key services are not made available to a vulnerable person because a partner agency is not present and an alternative representative is unavailable or not sufficiently trained to share information and participate in interventions,” the review noted. “These delays can result in a vulnerable person living with acutely elevated risk for an extended period of time, thereby increasing their risk of a crisis or trauma.”

Beatty says the Kamloops application will go before City Council in the new year, seeking final approval, letting them know of the successes and challenges.

If that happens, the city will then ask social agencies and other partners for letters of support, with the application then being forwarded on to Public Safety Minister, Mike Farnworth, for a final approval.

“I’m not sure how long that approval process is, but from my understanding, its fairly quickly,” Beatty said. “If I had to put a date on it, I would say definitely Q1 of 2024.”

“I’m very passionate about this program, I know our Superintendent of the Kamloops RCMP is also passionate about this, so its something we’re really looking to get to the city of Kamloops immediately.”