'CAST' a success 1 year in

Photo: Colin Dacre

Supt. Ted De Jager and the DPA's Lynn Allin before Penticton council Tuesday

One year since its launch, a weekly “situation table” aimed at helping Penticton’s most vulnerable has been paying dividends, city council heard Tuesday.

The Community Active Support Table (CAST) brings together social service and healthcare providers, police, bylaw and others to a single table once a week. 

The group has dealt with 60 “situations” in its first year; be it a family about to become homeless, a youth falling into addiction and crime or an untreated mental illness on the streets.

“There is always a big discussion around criminality versus vulnerability and what the difference between those two is,” said RCMP Supt. Ted De Jager, explaining addiction, social issues, homelessness and mental health challenges drive “the perception of crime in a community.”

The reality though, is that prolific offenders are the cause of most crime, De Jager said.

“That doesn’t mean that homeless or vulnerable people don’t commit crime, but generally speaking there is a better approach than simply going to the courts which is going to take months and months,” he said. “When dealing with them right from the root cause will have a much quicker result.”

While preliminary results of CAST are encouraging, an academic review of the program — which is modelled after similar successful systems in Surrey and Prince Albert — will take place.

De Jager said more work needs to be done to change the attitudes some Penticton residents have for local homeless and vulnerable people.

“While it's understandable that people don’t like to see this on our streets, nobody does — in a perfect world all of those people would be housed and all of those people would be out of the visual eye — the desire to be intolerant of that is not helping.”

“The people that are sitting around the table each week are helping, and the more we can engage the community on that, the better that the community will become,” De Jager added. 

“Nobody is going to be cured of their addictions overnight,” he said, explaining programs like this need time, pointing to social housing coming online this fall.

CAST co-chairs Debbie Scarborough of SOWINS and Lynn Allin of the Downtown Penticton Association also addressed council, sharing stories about how the program has benefited the community.

Scarborough said interventions conducted by CAST include “lots of tears… because people are actually there to help.”

City councillors thanked the program for its efforts. The launch of CAST was funded by a $50,000 grant from the provincial government, but it remains self-sustaining moving forward.