Virtual sessions will help Addiction Services reach more people in need

Some might think not a lot can be accomplished in an hour; but 60 minutes in the right hands could be a life-saver for people in the community struggling with addictions.

Addiction Services of York Region, which provides critical services in both York Region and South Simcoe, launched a new program last week designed to reach more people and help get clients the help they need over the phone or over a computer – anywhere in Ontario.

Addiction Services of York Region's (ASYR) new virtual single-session counselling services are available for adults and youth aged 12 and up to get faster help for any questions or concerns they might have about substance use and addiction.

After answering a few short registration questions over the phone, anyone in Ontario can book a single-session appointment on Tuesday or Thursday afternoons. A session typically lasts about an hour and is carried out by confidential video link or through a traditional phone line.

During a session, a trained counsellor will provide information and support using “techniques based on motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioural therapy.”

“As an agency, we're trying our best to be as creative as possible with the funding we receive from the government to respond to the needs of the communities we serve,” says Penny Marrett, Executive Director of the AYSR. “We recognize that not everyone can come to in-person services. Sometimes it might have to do with where you work and where the service is being offered. It might be about how your work or school schedule is. Being able to offer the personal services just adds another vehicle for us to be able to offer services.”

Offering these virtual services is a pivot that might have come from the global pandemic, but it is also a pivot that will have ongoing benefits long after the pandemic is behind us.

ASYR clients, says Susan McGrail, Clinical Director for the organization, have come to like the virtual options offered over the last year-and-a-half as it has provided options for parents who might not be able to find a babysitter to get out for an in-person appointment, might worry about transportation or transit into a clinic, or find it difficult to make that first step face to face.

“They like that confidentiality and that ease of access to a professional counsellor because our main tool as counsellors is conversation,” says McGrail. “We're pretty excited about working that way and clinicians and clients are saying they quite like that.

“Our clients like to feel safe too from the pandemic and the worry of encountering others in a waiting room or going to an in-person service.”

With that said, however, there are some challenges.

Not everyone who seeks out assistance from the ASYR have a private and confidential spot to sit down and speak to a professional worker about their substance use issues and concerns.

“That is a challenge for people having that technology and having that privacy to be able to do that,” she continues. “For me, one of the challenges is when I am meeting somebody new, I really like to maybe show them their chair, maybe hold it, maybe give them some Kleenex or offer them a coffee and bring it to them myself to make them at ease --- just those tiny things. If someone, say, has been mandated to come and see you by an employer, you can put them a lot at ease with things like that. On virtual, you have your words and you have your smile.”

But having these options available to them now is putting smiles not just on the faces of counsellors and professionals who work with the ASYR, but clients themselves.

On the first day of their launch on August 3, they had immediate uptake. The first client was simply someone “looking for more information to help them figure out what's better for them in their own journey,” but the reasons a potential client might reach out are almost limitless.

“We think there might be a lot of people who just aren't sure of things and have some questions,” says McGrail. “Mom might have found some drug paraphernalia in her son's bedroom and just wants to call in real quick and ask how concerned she should be, how might she approach this and what she should do. That coaching that you might give someone at the time just might give her the tools to address the issue and then, if someone wants to come back as a couple or to a parent education group, those things can all be explored with them. If we are not 100 per cent the right fit, someone calls in and says they need supports for their son who is on the autism spectrum, we could also steer them in the right direction.”

Adds Merritt: “In the end, what we want to do is provide the support for the individual who is in the session to make a decision about how best they feel they want to move forward. We will totally respect that decision, whatever the decision is. If the decision is to want to have more services and the services they're looking for we provide, we will then move that forward. If they decide they want to stay where they are, they have some additional information and have had a chance to talk to someone. They can then make that decision, but they know their decision is being respected.

“I think that is really the important theme. We're not there to convince them to make a chance that they're not ready for. We're there to provide them with information and support so they can make the decision that is the best for them at that time.”

For more information about this and any other services ASYR has to offer, visit asyr.ca or call 1-800-263-2288.

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter