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 Centre for Addictionand Mental Health |
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Media and Events
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“Just give it away” - Multilingual service goes provincialUsing an ingenious solution, CAMH recently extended its multilingual problem gambling service across the province, and it’s an idea that could be applied to other services in the future. “It’s about capacity building and diversity,” says Nina Littman-Sharp, Manager of Problem Gambling Services. “One of the best ways that I can think of to build capacity in these communities is to partner with the service providers that exist, and train them to do the work, rather than trying to do it all ourselves.”
Since 1999, CAMH and COSTI Immigrant Services have been working together to make problem gambling treatment, outreach and education more readily available in the wide range of different languages, and to the different communities, that exist in the Greater Toronto Area. Culturally appropriate treatment “We’re taking our resources and we’re handing them out with basically no strings attached,” Nina says. “The intention really is just to share this stuff. Not to try and be proprietary, not to try and get your territory all to yourself. Just give it away. The more you share the more you get back.” In 2002, working closely with Colleen Tessier in CAMH’s Problem Gambling Project, they established partnerships with several different agencies, and provide funding on a fee-for-service basis, which made service available in 17 different languages. “It’s not just language, either,” Nina says. “This is also culturally appropriate treatment. We’re not telling them how to do the treatment. We’re giving them what we know, and we’re telling them, ‘Make it what works for your community.’” “It’s really cheap”
Recently, Nina decided it was time to go province-wide, and she found a simple and cost-effective way to do it: she arranged for every partnering agency to have a toll-free number, which became active on April 1. “Each agency has its own number, so the person who calls one will be answered in that language, and they can proceed in that language,” she says. “It’s really cheap. We were already spending about $50,000 a year on this, which isn’t a lot for the GTA. Taking it to the province is costing us about another $15,000.” Nina believes this solution could be applied easily to other services that CAMH offers. “We managed, in the course of relatively few years, to build up a network that has hugely increased the availability of treatment in this one particular area, for people who probably would not have accessed treatment without this,” she says. “It’s also increased the education and prevention available in those communities, and we did all this for quite minimal amounts of money.”
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Last updated: Aug 17, 2009 10:59 AM Published: Dec 09, 2009 4:56 PM ID#P45426 |