Victoria News, Letter from VARCS Executive Director, Karen Dennis
23 Mar 2007
Re: editorial, "Under a cloud" (see below) in the March 16 edition:
I'm the executive director of Victoria AIDS Resource and Community Service Society (VARCS). VARCS is a non profit society that's been around for 15 years, created by a man who realized that too many people with HIV/AIDS were ending up in hospital and hospice earlier than necessary often because family, partners and friends were burning out providing 24-hour care.
Karen Dennis
VARCS started with the simple idea that the community could act as that extended family for people with AIDS and their caregivers. Initially, five respite homes became available through volunteers who had a second bedroom and cared for our members so their caregivers could get a much needed break. Since then, much has changed.
With medication, more people do well and requests for respite have gone down while the need for community connections and response to individuals whose needs include homelessness, addictions, mental health and complex social and health situations persist. VARCS has evolved to meet these changing needs, and we provide unique services.
As we see those who were diagnosed in the 1980s getting older and getting ill with secondary sickness due to HIV, we have actually utilized our respite home for the first time in years and have been receiving many calls about the service. VARCS also operates a mobile needle exchange program. We work off a cellphone and go to the client, and the service operates while AIDS Vancouver Island's needle exchange is closed.
Approximately 50 per cent of our contacts are in residential neighborhoods that do not access any other services downtown.
I wanted to clarify that it is not just AIDS Vancouver Island that receives funding from VIHA, there is us and another small AIDS group, Victoria Persons With AIDS Society which has also resulted in a significant funding decrease with this new process implemented by VIHA. VIHA is actually allocating more money to prevention services, specifically needle exchanges, and will not be funding other services such as treatment maintenance and support services.
The one year "transitional funding" is designated to top up the decreased budget offered by VIHA for the first year of the three-year contract, not to continue services as normal, but to address any staff cutbacks and to start to phase out the services they will no longer fund. This decision by VIHA for Geographic Equity will severely impact all three AIDS organizations in Victoria, resulting in the impact of already overworked and under-budgeted other service providers in the city.
Karen Dennis, Victoria
Under a cloud
Mar 16 2007
A strange and unsavoury game of brinksmanship is underway in the Vancouver Island Health Authority's efforts to renegotiate its contract with AIDS Vancouver Island.
It's the first time since the New Democrats held power in B.C. that AVI's contract has been renegotiated, and although neither party will comment on the situation, it's obvious there's a vast gap between AVI's expectations and VIHA's miserly tendencies.
In January, VIHA threatened to "reallocate" $450,000 of AVI funding from the south Island to the north and central Island. The reasons are two-fold - to correct an "imbalance of funding between the South Island and the rest of the Island and to provide more dollars to those at the greatest risk of contracting HIV."
The health authority has since backed off, agreeing that any funding changes won't happen until next year. Despite VIHA's reluctance to make any public statements that might compromise negotiations, the threat of a 37.5 per cent cut to the South Island's budget can't help but serve as a tool of coercion at the bargaining table.
The argument for reallocating funds up Island is questionable. Victoria has 70 per cent of new HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C infections and receives about 80 per cent of the resources, reason perhaps for a 10 per cent shift in funding, but not 37 per cent.
VIHA also says AVI's health-care programs duplicate services already available in the Capital Region through the regular health-care system. Those services don't exist to such a degree north of Victoria, therefore up-Island agencies need more money - or so the logic goes.
VIHA's contractual brinksmanship comes just as AVI is embarking on two major projects. Earlier this month, the organization, flanked by stakeholder groups such as the Victoria police, the Downtown Victoria Business Association and the North Park Neighbourhood Association announced plans to move to a new location.
The move will require a budget boost of $110,000.
With local business exerting pressure on the City of Victoria, Victoria police and the health authority over ongoing problems with discarded syringes, excrement and vandalism near the Cormorant Street needle exchange, it's hard to see how VIHA can refuse to pay for the move.
AVI is also co-owner, along with the Victoria Cool Aid Society, of the Johnson Street building currently occupied by Rev. Al Tysick's Open Door street ministry. AVI footed half of the building's $1.1 million price tag, with an eye to separating the needle exchange operation from its prevention, treatment counselling and education programs.
Sources say AVI needs another $120,000 a year in ongoing funding to make that project a reality. This comes as no surprise to VIHA, which has been apprised of plans for the Johnson Street building for nearly two years.
There's been some suggestion that the province - let's be honest, it's ultimately the Health Ministry putting on the budget squeeze - wants a contract that will force AVI to be more accountable. But with both sides bartering in silence, we're left wondering if government bean counters feel AVI wants too much money for the services it delivers.
Let's hope that when it's all said and done sufficient public dollars remain available to efficiently and effectively prevent the spread of AIDS.