Service Enhancement

  • Alignment Across Pillar: Reduce barriers for people accessing services with an equity centred and trauma Informed approach, and offer support to increase the accessibility of programs and services in both urban and rural settings (e.g., transportation, child minding, free services, mobile outreach etc.).
  • Long Term Priority: Enhance withdrawal management services provided to individuals while in custody.

Building Community Capacity

  • Alignment Across Pillars: Identity and prioritize annual evidence-informed training for ECDAS members and partners, and provide evidence informed anti stigma training and promotion of respectful language and dialogue with all community partners that work across all four pillars.
  • Short Term Priorities: Decrease stigma associated with people in breach of probation by disabling commenting on social media posts, and provide harm reduction training to police and enforcement services in the community.

Community Coordination

  • Alignment Across Pillar: Improve coordination between community partners that work across all four pillars.
  • Short Term Priorities: Enhance discharge planning through coordination with multiple services (e.g., the provision of complimentary transportation, clothing and housing options); advocate for a peer support worker at the courthouse and a CMHA office in the courthouse to support service navigation, crisis intervention and assist with de-escalation; and aid in navigating services in the community through system navigators and peer support systems.
  • Long Term Priority: Enhance communication and collaboration between justice, treatment, social services and outreach services.

Advocacy

  • Alignment Across Pillars: Develop an advocacy strategy outlining advocacy efforts at the local, provincial and federal levels that aligned with drug and alcohol advocacy efforts in other regions.
  • Short Term Priority: Advocate for compassion fatigue training for all front-line workers.
  • Long Term Priority: Assess the needs of people with lived/living experience and their interactions with the justice system.