Lake Country Health Planning Society needs more support: council

The Lake Country Health Planning Society approached council with their 2018-2019 annual report, with a silver lining of asking for $25,000 in funding from council.

The report shows their service in four different categories — walk-ins, phone calls, emails and rides — has significantly increased from 2017 and 2018 to 2018 and 2019, with a notable 20 per cent increase in general requests since April 2019.

“To the volunteers who do this, we need to support them. This is a job that you take home at the end of the day — it’s a vocation. It’s not stuff that they come in and they work and they do their hours … they take it home, they think about it, mull it over,” Coun. Cara Reed said. “We need to be there to support them and if that means increasing our funding from 0.01 per cent to 0.02 per cent, I’d (support that).”

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Due to the increase in service demands, LCHPS wishes to expand their hours and programs for children and family, youth, adults, caregivers and mental health and substance use outreach support.

Executive director of LCHPS Corinne Remple said the organization is seeing a large gap in oversight at the youth level and would like to be accessible for the younger demographic.

“We are having an increase request for mental health support,” Remple said, in the same breath mentioning the need for children support. “We are not really able to meet the needs of the youth.”

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Currently, the LCHPS mostly refers people to resources they need, but with the funding from the district, Remple said they would like to start conducting workshops, invite guest speakers for seminars, host information sessions and continue looking for community partners.

The organization is a non-profit, charitable organization run by volunteers that promote, provide and advocate for accessible and quality health and wellness services in Lake Country.