First Peoples Wellness Circle and the Indigenous Mental Wellness and Trauma-Informed Specialist Workforce During COVID-19.

Members of the Indigenous mental wellness and trauma-informed specialist workforce - including Mental Wellness Teams (MWTs), Crisis Support Teams (CSTs), the Indian Residential Schools Resolution Health Support Program workforce, and other community-based cultural support workers - are often the primary and urgent care providers for individuals and families in need of culturally safe supports. While fulfilling a critical role, these teams contend with distinct challenges stemming from colonial impacts and health systems that continue to undermine Indigenous mental wellness and cultural traditions of healing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing rates of mental illness and substance use among Indigenous populations strained the already overworked and under-resourced mental wellness workforce. First Peoples Wellness Circle sought out and embraced new approaches for meaningful virtual engagement to sustain and enhance workforce wellness and capacity by facilitating culturally relevant and culturally led connections from coast to coast to coast.

Community-based screening and triage connecting First Nations children and youth to local supports: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: First Nations children in Canada experience health inequities. We aimed to determine whether a self-report health app identified children's needs for support earlier in their illness than would typically occur. METHODS: Children (aged 8 to 18 yr) were recruited from a rural First Nation community. Children completed the Aaniish Naa Gegii: the Children's Health and Well-being Measure (ACHWM) and then met with a local mental health worker who determined their risk status. ACHWM Emotional Quadrant Scores (EQS) were compared between 3 groups of children: healthy peers (HP) who were not at risk, those with newly identified needs (NIN) who were at risk and not previously identified, and a typical treatment (TT) group who were at risk and already receiving support. RESULTS: We included 227 children (57.1% girls), and the mean age was 12.9 (standard deviation [SD] 2.9) years. The 134 children in the HP group had a mean EQS of 80.1 (SD 11.25), the 35 children in the NIN group had a mean EQS of 67.2 (SD 13.27) and the 58 children in the TT group had a mean EQS of 66.2 (SD 16.30). The HP group had significantly better EQS than the NIN and TT groups (p < 0.001). The EQS did not differ between the NIN and TT groups (p = 0.8). INTERPRETATION: The ACHWM screening process identified needs for support among 35 children, and the associated triage process connected them to local services; the similarity of EQS in the NIN and TT groups highlights the value of community screening to optimize access to services. Future research will examine the impact of this process over the subsequent year in these groups.