City Council moving forward with involuntary care facility, but not without pushback
PRINCE GEORGE – Prince George City Council is continuing to move forward with plans to build a psychiatric care facility, as council voted in favour of advocating for a secure standalone psychiatric care facility.
“We need to get a psychiatric hospital built because we currently don’t (have one). We have only hospital beds. There’s a massive difference between a hospital bed and a psychiatric care facility, which is purposely operated to provide psychiatric, long term psychiatric care for patients,” Councillor Trudy Klassen said.
“The system that we have right now with patients being at UHNBC is that the system there is designed only to house people for up to two weeks, but there are people staying there for years. And as Doctor Barbara Kane has said, some people are discharged before they are ready to go out into the public simply because they don’t have room,” she continued.
The psychiatric care facility had 5 motions attached to it, with four of the five focused on advocating for this facility and moving forward with plans to get it built. Those four were passed unanimously by council. However, the second motion focuses on enabling “involuntary admittance to specialized, compassionate care facilities.” This saw all of council except Klassen vote in favour of it, as Klassen believes pushing for involuntary care right now isn’t the right move.