In 2024, Central Saanich Police and West Shore RCMP said<\/a> they would reinvest their contributions back into their own communities. <\/p>\n\u201cThis service no longer involves police and is not designed to be a first response service,\u201d reads the April 7 letter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe conducted a review, and we found we were having diminished service, really weren\u2019t getting much out of our contribution to those units,\u201d said Central Saanich Police Chief Ian Lawson in November 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cA disproportionate amount of time is being spent outside the West Shore and neighbouring communities despite the significant contributions being paid into these teams,\u201d said former West Shore RCMP Sup. Todd Preston in November 2024.<\/p>\n
By the end of 2025, all regional police forces had left IMCRT. As a result, Island Health says it \u201creconfigured\u201d the program, consolidating it with its Encampment Outreach Team (EOT).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe recognized there was an opportunity to reduce overlap,\u201d said the health authority.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsland Health has reconfigured IMCRT and EOT to focus on crisis response, early intervention, care coordination, assessment, short-term transitional care and bridging supports for those experiencing a mental or physical health care crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018This is absolutely critical.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\nSaanich Police Chief Dean Duthie says that with the program ended, his department is no longer able to efficiently respond to mental health calls and that wait times for officers inside hospitals have increased.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is absolutely critical. The mental health calls continue to come in. They\u2019re complex, they need to be patient-focused, and a multi-disciplinary approach is the way to go,\u201d said Duthie.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen this happened, with fewer people at the table, it became fiscally not viable for us to continue and therefore the IMCRT model changed. The IMCRT model now is strictly without police,\u201d added Duthie.<\/p>\n
He said that his department has tried to recreate a similar unit involving mental health staff, but was told by Island Health that it didn\u2019t have the resources.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t wait for us to have nothing since the IMCRT model has changed. So we\u2019ve stood up a police only crisis response team.\u201d <\/p>\n
Two officers now make up the police force\u2019s mental health unit, funded through July 2026 from the previous year\u2019s operating budget, with a dedicated funding stream starting after.<\/p>\n
In 2024, Saanich Police had 456 calls for service involving the Mental Health Act, and 462 the following year. Leading to 399 and 386 apprehensions, respectively.<\/p>\n
Duthie says that without a dedicated unit, it has led to an increase in hospital wait times for officers. <\/p>\n
Not enough resources<\/strong><\/p>\nIsland Health says it\u2019s aware of Saanich\u2019s request but doesn\u2019t have \u201cthe human resources or funding\u201d to assign staff for each regional police department on the south Island.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue to assess the outcomes of the new team designs and make adjustments when and if needed,\u201d said Island Health in a statement.<\/p>\n
Island Health adds it\u2019s looking to create an \u201cinformation sharing agreement\u201d with the RCMP.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis complex work is underway and must comply with provincial privacy and information regulations governing health information. Once finalized, this agreement will be rolled out to other police departments.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Health tells CHEK News that by consolidating the two programs, they expect to see an increase in the number of in-person, face-to-face responses to crisis calls.<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Health emphasizes that even with changes to IMCRT, police will still be present when necessary.<\/p>\n
Other departments<\/strong><\/p>\nIMCRT was one of three regional units that West Shore RCMP were a part of, at a cost of around $350,000 for all three programs. <\/p>\n
Several months before West Shore RCMP said it would leave IMCRT, it formed its own Mental Health Unit (MHU), mirroring IMCRT. <\/p>\n
The detachment at the time said it would leave two other regional policing units. <\/p>\n
West Shore RCMP left the Mobile Youth Service Team (MYST) in December 2025 and will exit the Regional Domestic Violence Unit (RDVU) by the end of 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe remaining funds are being directed toward the addition of a Community and Indigenous Policing Unit officer as part of the Youth Outreach Team. In addition, last year we established a Domestic Violence Co-ordinator position at the constable level,\u201d said the detachment in a statement.<\/p>\n
The detachment says there have been 466 mental health-related calls between January 1 and March 31 of this year.<\/p>\n
In 2023, Victoria Police (VicPD) launched its Co-Response Team (CRT), which is similar to IMCRT.<\/p>\n
\u201cA key difference being CRT is dispatched when police assistance is required, compared to IMCRT, which is a health-led initiative that can also provide other levels of support services that may be requested from local physicians, families, and teams in the community,\u201d said VicPD in a statement. <\/p>\n
\nRELATED: West Shore RCMP roll out new tool for mental health calls<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saanich council will write a letter to the Ministry of Health requesting help in establishing a mental health…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":951628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[105,218,16,15,359],"class_list":{"0":"post-951627","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-video"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=951627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/951628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}