We came home after the final Perils Fringe show to discover a woman sitting on our front porch waiting for her son. She insisted he and his wife were here. Our front door camera had already picked her up so we kinda knew what we were coming home to.
And yet…..what we didn’t know is that our city has absolutely no mechanism in place to help people who need mental health help. We tried talking to her but she just got very upset. So we went inside and locked the doors. Her purse was large and she was pretty angry. We were concerned.
We called 211 and that’s why I’m writing this blog entry. The line is called Mental Health And Addictions. But it turns out, they are not trained to help with mental health problems. Yes, you read that correctly and yes, the young man who answered the call was completely candid about it.
In the meantime, my father went to his dining room to work on his puzzle while watching the Blue Jays. And then she started entering our backyard….repeatedly….and ringing his doorbell and banging on his door.
If he let her in, we knew it would take a police officer to physically remove her and we didn’t want that for her or for my father for that matter. So we called the police.
After at least 15 minutes on hold, we talked to someone for at least another 15 before being told that someone would swing by. The police came about 25 minutes later which is not bad for this day and age.
And the constable in charge was really good! We worried for my Dad and we worried for this woman. But the big take away is that our current government is again not looking after our people.
Why would a Mental Health And Addictions line have nobody trained in mental health? I’ll tell you why….because this is as mismanaged as AHS. And that’s the sad truth. So the question still remains….where are the services when we need them?
a little P.S. – had Dad’s little skin cancer surgery on Tue morning and while it went well (and he had no pain even after the freezing wore off), it was exceedingly hard to convince him to leave the bandage on for as long as the doc said was required. So, after 3 new bandages….I’ve given up and gone with “it looks really good”! and it does.
