ESTEVAN — The Estevan Police Service wants to expand its Police and Crisis Team (PACT), but first it needs another social worker.
The EPS provided an update on the unit at the Feb. 11 meeting of the Estevan board of police commissioners, explaining why PACT continues to have just one EPS officer and a social worker.
Deputy Police Chief Warren Morrical said that when the provincial government announced funding for the EPS through the Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods (SCAN) program in September 2024, the EPS wanted one of the three funded positions to be a second PACT officer to work alongside a second social worker from the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA).
When PACT first came to Estevan in 2022, an EPS officer was teamed with two social workers, but Morrical noted that one of those SHA employees relocated after about a year in the position, and the post has been vacant since.
“The SHA has been diligent in posting for that second SHA social worker position. They’ve done so multiple times, however, they’ve been unable to identify a suitable applicant with the required background in education and social work.”
Rather than assigning a second EPS officer to work in PACT without an SHA counterpart, the EPS reassigned one of the SCAN-funded positions to a community engagement officer.
“It’s our vision at this time that for this position, the individual is really going to do a number of different things,” said Morrical.
“They’re going to enhance our relationship with community stakeholders. They’re going to work with the community to promote crime prevention, highlight awareness and put forward some of the educational programs that we engage in, engage with the students in our local schools, and really just be a dedicated point of contact for our community to advance our programming goals and really to build solid relationships,” said Morrical.
Once the SHA is able to fill the second social worker position, the EPS would likely look at using alternate officers to support that work, without assigning a dedicated second police officer.
PACT remains a significant contributor to the EPS’s ability to respond to individuals experiencing mental health and addictions-related crises, he said, and providing follow-up connection and resources.
Const. Michelle Beaulieu is the current EPS PACT officer and Stacy Murphy is the social worker. Morrical said PACT can continue to function with its current arrangement, but it is limited in the work it can do because it does not have around-the-clock coverage.
“Right now we’re certainly trying to maximize the usefulness of PACT by both having an assigned dedicated member, and then supplementing where we need to with other police officers to support Stacy’s role in that PACT,” said Morrical.
Beaulieu is on a modified work schedule that might be 8 a.m.-8 p.m. or noon to midnight, Morrical said.
“The hours she works are different to align with, statistically, where we see the majority of our mental health issues coming up,” said Morrical.
When Murphey and Beaulieu are on the same shift, they work together, Morrical said. If Murphy is working and Beaulieu is not, then Murphy is partnered with another officer. If Beaulieu is working and Murphy isn’t, then Morrical said the PACT team doesn’t have the social work aspect; Beaulieu follows up and attends all mental health calls.
Morrical said PACT is busy enough to have a full-time schedule and to need the second tandem.
“They are very pro-active, so there are times where both Michelle and Stacy will be reaching out to individuals that we have identified through other calls for service or observations.”
The number of front-line responses to mental health issues in the EPS quarterly reports does not represent the full scope of the work PACT performs in Estevan, Morrical said.
