The North Bay Community Immobilization Hub is earning recognition in the Big Smoke.
A Toronto Star article quoted Minister Yasir Naqvi as saying the collaboration between service providers works.
The Minister of community safety and correctional services says other communities should look into a similar model. Â North Bay Police Chief Shawn Devine says those are nice accolades from the Minister.
He says it was a real kudos for him to mention North Bay, the first community in the province to implement a community mobile hub program.
The community mobile hub takes at risk individuals and finds ways to solve their problem instead of just incarcerating them.
Devine the hub is having positive results because they aren`t focused on just locking people up.
He says instead they are combining all the services in the community to really breakdown what the root of the cause is. He says this includes North Bay Police, hospital staff, social service workers and more.
Devine says this is a real partnership because of all the information that is shared between the groups. In the past, different service providers may have dealt with the same individual multiple times but they had no way of knowing because they dealt in silos. Now, with everyone at the table, Devine says the best work is being done for the individuals within these collaborations.
The program started when recently retired Chief Paul Cook and Chair of the local Health Unit Jim Chirico collaborated on setting up the community hub.
