As of the beginning of October, Victim Services in Alberta have transitioned from 62 independently run boards to four regionally managed areas.
According to Michele Moroz, the chief executive officer for the central region, the changes will help streamline service delivery across the province.
Each Victim Services Unit within the central region will have a full-time navigator based out of the local RCMP detachment, and each unit will be responsible for the same area as the detachment ensuring continuity and familiarity with local officers.
While local boards, and local control, of victim services units are gone, Moroz says that the new regions are each guided by a governing board with representation from around the region, ensuring local voices are heard.
"In Central Zone, we are absolutely focused on local representation," said Moroz. "We think that's very important, and, we are doing that on a regional level."
As for the local navigators, Moroz says many previous managers, 76 per cent of them, from within the old Victim Services system have been approached and accepted positions within the new organization. This has helped with hiring as they previously had and still retained their enhanced security clearances required for the positions.
When it came to RCMP members doing referrals for those needing Victim Services, under the old system there was no set way. Some detachments had digital referral processes, while others used paper referral forms, meaning that the referral would not be seen until the program manager was in again, causing delays.
Navigators at the RCMP detachments now work under set office hours, and where there was a wide discrepancy between availability, and navigator pay, from system to system, Moroz says that under the regionalized model, everything has been standardized, including referrals.
Under the new, streamlined system, Moroz says that all referrals for Victims Services are electronic and go to a central "triage" which will assign them to the most appropriate resource, or if someone is on holiday, the closest available resource. An example Moroz gave was if the Stettler navigator was on holiday, the central navigator would likely assign any referrals to Bashaw, and vice versa.
"Now, with a regional approach, we can fill in those gaps," said Moroz.
For more emergent situations necessitating a scene call, RCMP officers will have access to a telephone dispatch line that can determine the needs at the scene, the safety of the scene, and whether advocates are needed right away, can meet the clients at the hospital or even follow up the next morning.
While the majority of the navigators are in place under the regional system, Moroz says that the local advocate pools are still being built. Volunteers who have previously served in the capacity in the local communities are being offered the opportunity to step back into that role, should they wish to join the new system. According to Moroz, the only paperwork for the previous advocates to fill out is an application, as everything else should remain current.
"We definitely, we will need to attract more advocates," said Moroz. " We want to bring up everybody to a standardized, knowledge base ... we know they're very knowledgeable, but there have been some areas of specialty or perhaps, different approaches and different specific areas we want to pursue ... We support it in a more standardized way."
According to Moroz, the advocate program should be completely up and running within four-to-six weeks.
"We have to ensure our processes and procedures are in place," said Moroz.
Stettler and Bashaw are both part of the Central Alberta Regional Victim Services, while Castor is covered by the Coronation RCMP detachment and part of the Eastern Alberta Regional Victim Services zone.
Victim Services navigators and advocates can walk beside someone who is the victim of crime or tragedy, either on the scene, at the hospital, in court, or anywhere in between.
"I'm so proud of the work we've done," said Moroz.
For more information on the Victim Services redesign, check out the Government of Alberta website at www.alberta.ca/victim-services-regional-model.
