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Burden Bearers Counselling and Grande Prairie Palliative Care Society
By Liam Verster
Palliative Care training and counselling services

Two Grande Prairie non-profits benefit from provincial mental health grants

Feb 2, 2021 | 1:03 PM

The Grande Prairie Palliative Care Society and Burden Bearers Counselling are both receiving money through the provincial Mental Health and Addiction COVID-19 Community Funding grant.

The Grande Prairie Palliative Care Society will be receiving $175,000 through this grant, which will mainly go towards providing more mental health and wellness training for the volunteers.

Hope McNally, Executive Director for the Society, says the volunteers undergo palliative care training, but this initiative will provide them with the tools necessary for dealing with patients who have been isolated.

“Then (after their training) we’re going to partner them one-one-one with community members or facility members,” says McNally.

“Now that partnering can be over the phone, or it can be virtually, or it can be, best case scenario, it can be in person. And they are going to work closely with the mental health team to come up with supports and resources for where they’re at at that moment.”

She adds the volunteers are ‘companions,’ not counsellors, and will be there to actively listen, connect and support the patients, and when needed, direct the patient to appropriate resources for further supports.

The funding will also help bring in an added social worker and an on-call psychologist.

She adds this program is especially critical after this past year saw seniors and those in long-term, palliative, and hospice care unable to see their families in person.

Meanwhile, Burden Bearers Counselling will receive $200,000, which will be split between the offices in Grande Prairie, Hinton and Sundre. The money will then be used to help cover wages, advertising costs, and the reduced fee counselling services.

Pamela Landry with Burden Bearers says they run reduced fee counselling as part of their normal operations, but there has been a large number of people seeking the services recently.

“There has been a lot of people struggling right now,” says Landry. “So they can come in and fill in an application and we have a look at their information and decide from there what they can afford to pay.”

Landry says the money for wages will be helpful, as they’ve increased their staffing levels over the past year to meet demand.

She adds the non-profit hasn’t been able to run their usual fundraisers in the past year, and the money will help mitigate the impact of not hosting fundraisers

These applications have been approved, and the funding is expected to be provided to the non-profits in the coming month.

by Liam Verster