Photo courtesy of Dean Bear
A Saskatchewan First Nation is using a model from a neighboring city to help deal with social issues and at risk individuals in their community.
Last March, the Muskoday First Nation implemented the Muskoday Intervention Circle (MIC) as a way to mobilize supports around community members in situations of risk before harm occurs.
The program is modeled after the Prince Albert HUB, which brings together educators, health and social workers and the police to deal with people at risk. The group presented their work to the Empowering our Communities Conference, hosted by New North in Prince Albert, which represents northern communities.
The group meets weekly to discuss situations in the community to address risk and attempt to deal with it before it becomes a serious problem.
Co-Chair Ava Bear says a lot of the issues they deal with like drug and alcohol abuse, mental health issues, family violence and elder abuse are common not only on reserves but in society as a whole.
Bear says the initiative started a few years ago and evolved from an inter-agency committee, which was made up of program heads like health, justice, education and social assistance to look at programming for community members and address social issues.
She says the programming then was more reactive than proactive. With the MIC now in place, the group can now maximize the collective impact of multiple human service providers rather than a person being referred to each individual department.
“We like to think of it as working upstream. If you think about a stream flowing down the river and you see risk ahead of time, you want to deal with it now before it reaches that point, where it may be harder to get that individual into treatment, out of an abusive situation, stop them harming themselves, or whatever that situation may be,” Bear said.
She said if they work on the risk before it becomes a problem, they see much more benefit.