{"id":146838,"date":"2026-07-28T16:39:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T16:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/146838\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T16:39:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T16:39:10","slug":"winnipeg-doesnt-need-entirely-new-system-for-mental-health-calls-report-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/146838\/","title":{"rendered":"Winnipeg doesn’t need entirely new system for mental health calls, report says"},"content":{"rendered":"

A report exploring Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham’s proposal to create a new emergency service to handle mental health calls says the city doesn’t need to build an entirely new system.<\/p>\n

The third-party report released Tuesday<\/a> recommends the creation of a new “crisis response pathway” for mental health calls that enables 911 calls to be diverted to community-based crisis responders.<\/p>\n

Gillingham first floated the idea in 2024<\/a> of a fourth service to respond to mental health calls that don’t involve\u00a0safety concerns requiring a\u00a0police, paramedic\u00a0or firefighter presence.<\/p>\n

Last December, city council’s executive committee approved a motion for a contract<\/a> with Pensa Consulting to create a detailed proposal for what was referred to as a “crisis response service.”<\/p>\n

The report says the main challenge in Winnipeg is not the absence of services, but lack of integration between existing supports.<\/p>\n

\"Winnipeg<\/p>\n

Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham speaks at a Tuesday news conference. He first proposed the idea in 2024 of a fourth service to respond to mental health calls that don’t involve safety concerns requiring a police, paramedic or firefighter presence. (Arturo Chang\/CBC)<\/p>\n

The report’s proposed model would have the existing 911 dispatch system divert calls to community-based services.<\/p>\n

A limited number of community organizations would respond to calls based on location and specialty.<\/p>\n

The report also proposes allowing people to access crisis response services directly through “multiple entry points,” including crisis lines, regional crisis services and “other approved access channels.”<\/p>\n

Gillingham said during a Tuesday morning news conference a motion to endorse the proposed model will be put forward to council in September.<\/p>\n

He said that model anticipates a partnership with the province, and that he will ask the province to come to the table then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A report exploring Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham’s proposal to create a new emergency service to handle mental health…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[47768,47767,47769,4471,4648,84],"class_list":["post-146838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-911-calls","tag-crisis-response","tag-emergency-service","tag-mental-health","tag-scott-gillingham","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}