The CEO of the Central Alberta Regional Victim Serving Society (CARVSS) detailed St. Albert's police-based victim services to City council on May 6, approximately six months after the model of victim services changed to become more regionally based.
Victim services officially changed to a regional model last fall. The province's victim-serving organizations are broken up into East, West, Central and South regions. CARVSS covers 20 municipalities, including St. Albert, Morinville, and Parkland.
CARVSS CEO Lauren Reid spoke at St. Albert city council on May 6 to outline the St. Albert police-based victim services unit they have staffed at the RCMP detachment here in the city, which has been in operation for about six months now.
"Not a lot has changed. We still have frontline court and support navigators working out of all the RCMP detachments in our region," Reid said in an interview following her presentation during the May 6 city council meeting. There are currently two full-time staff members working out of the St. Albert RCMP detachment.
"We'll have volunteers that help us with community events and advocacy throughout the community," Reid told council. "A big part of that will be that after-hours crisis response and having people available to be alongside people after hours."
She also added that since becoming operational, they've assisted 424 victims out of the St. Albert detachment area, with the main crime type being domestic disputes, no charges laid. She told the council that around 80 per cent of their calls come from St. Albert versus the surrounding area.
"We retained most of our staff that was working and the advocates as well," she said. "So we have, sort of, the experienced people that were previously working in the old unit. We're just now recruiting new ones."
Reid said that although their pool of volunteer advocates is small right now, she said they're able to cover the core services with the paid staff they have on board and that they are beginning to actively recruit volunteers.
"We're trying to grow that volunteer advocate team for the after hours and weekends. We are available 24/7 to the RCMP over the phone, so they can call us, we can triage it. We can connect to the victim over the phone," she said. She added that there are pockets of time where they are struggling to make sure somebody is available within 30 minutes, so she wouldn't guarantee that their volunteer advocates are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The organization has also shifted to a new funding model, funded 100 per cent by the province. Currently, she said they are basing that funding on historic data such as file count and population size.
CARVSS is "100 per cent Government of Alberta victim of crime fund funded, and that's part of the sustainability," she said. "Our navigators in the communities aren't fundraising all day anymore. They're doing front lines, so we have a more sustainable funding model."
Coun. Ken MacKay, a former police officer, asked Reid on the variety of situations that the organization would still be called out for by the RCMP, such as motor vehicle collisions, drug overdoses and suicide, of which the answers remained the same as the previous iteration of victim services.
"We're there to help families through that time no matter what it is," she said.
