Most people attending the Ad Vox Day with Dr. Simon Davidson would agree that conditions for children suffering from mental health issues are deplorable in Canada – but Davidson himself believes Guelph and Wellington County are at least farther ahead in the work than most places.
He had just finished a luncheon in Guelph that included over 70 influential people from the community, including politicians, social service workers and media officials.
“An event like this is extraordinary,” he said. “You were able to bring together so many disparate groups.” He cited groups such as youth justice and child welfare workers, as well as health officials.
“If we’re going to look after kids, we need those local groups,” Davidson said.
He was brought to the community by Ad Vox, which, for three years, has been “adding voices together for mental health for children and youth.”
Dr. Davidson is a practicing child psychiatrist, and is a leader in the Provincial Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health at CHEO (Ottawa).
He is also a part of the Mental Health Commission of Canada, and noted because of that, he sees the issue from the national and local perspective.
Davidson was in the area to see and experience a community that was mobilized around the many issues that complicate and challenge mental health care for kids.
He said part of the problem for children needing help today is there are so many disparate agencies that are supposed to help them.
Many of those are in government, but he said they have created “silos.” That means they focus on their own ministry and not hard enough on working with others to help children.
“Cross linkages are not nearly as communicative,” Davidson said.
But, he said, Guelph and Wellington are breaking out of that by working together. “It is fantastically promising … that they can work collectively,” he said.
“Here, it appears, the silos have been broken down. So that’s a good start for youth.”
Davidson was asked how government, with a struggling health care system, can take money away from general health care and provide it to something specific such as children’s mental health.
He said first, the government has already separated the children’s needs from general health care. That happened in 1978 when the children’s issues were removed from the Ministry of Health. Since then, the children’s issues have been handled by a number of ministries whose names keep changing.
But, he said, 15 years ago the funding was cut for children’s mental health by the simple expedient of not providing increases annually.
“Since over 80% of funding goes to salary and benefits, the service shrinks,” he said, noting with salary increases each year, there is less money for programs, or staff has to be cut.
“So it’s been shrinking year after year,” he said of help for kids.
What bothers him is Canadians tell him children’s mental health is very important to them, but the tough part is to convince the politicians.
He noted the perplexities with government, and said a TV comedy host once pointed out people claim overspending caused the recession, and the governments are trying to solve that problem with more overspending.
“Maybe we need bridges and roads and buildings, but not as much as we need modest investment in children and youth mental health,” he said, adding, “We have to do better – way better.”
He said one way to do that is, “We have to help government make it happen.”
To do that, he suggested a strong movement of a wide variety of groups, along with politicians, to help the government focus on the problem.
Later in the evening, Davidson met again at Victoria Park East Golf Club with the invited public to take questions and comments and consider solutions to child mental health.
