Over the course of 2020, St’át’imc Outreach Health Services (SOHS) has seen the rise in the consequences of opioid use in the Lillooet Area. The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have magnified a problem that pre-existed COVID. As response, over the summer of 2020, SOHS hosted two video conference meetings with other local health and emergency services programs. Out of those meetings came the decision to create an inter-disciplinary Opioid Crisis Response Committee (OCRC)
Mandate and Scope
The mandate of the OCRC is to plan, coordinate, and evaluate an integrated collaborative community-based opioid response. This includes assessing gaps in the current response to promote communication across OCRC members and the public, and creating strategic or policy recommendation.
The OCRC is an advisory committee tasked with making recommendations to the LTC Health Administrator concerning strategies and programming related to an enhanced opioid response. These recommendations may include how SOHS can work more effectively with other agencies in a coordinated response to the opioid crisis. The committee may take a number of approaches to it focus:
- Prevention
- Recovery and Rehabilitation
- Harm Reduction
- Enforcement
- Community Development – enhancing the communities ability to respond
Out of Scope
The OCRC is NOT responsible for:
- The management or oversight of SOHS staff or its finances
- Making recommendations on human resource issues
- Case planning, case management and any discussions about SOHS clients
- Representing the LTC or SOHS
Term
The OCRC is an Ad HOC Committee initially struck for one year to explore the benefits of pursuing a comprehensive integrated opioid response. These Terms of Reference will be reviewed in July 2021 to assess to effectiveness of the OCRC and the future goals of the committee
Membership
The membership of the OCRC is open to any agency that serves the Lillooet Area that believes it can contribute to an effective opioid response. The LTC Health Administrator is an ex-officio member of the committee where they are not appointed as a full member
Meetings & Decision-Making
Meetings – Are held monthly or as determined by the committee
Quorum – The OCRC is advisory in nature, therefore does not require a quorum to have an effective meeting
Chair – The ORCRC will chose a chair or co-chairs from amongst its membership. The Chair (co-chairs will be reviewed annually)
Secretarial Support – The SOHS will provide secretarial support by preparing information packages, meeting minutes and an agenda in advance of the meeting. The agenda will be developed through consultative process with all committee members
Minutes– The chair iwll ensure minutes of each meeting are kept and available to the LTC Health Administrator upon request
Resources
Each member (participating agency) will cover the cost of their own participation
The OCRC may engage the participation or input of subject-matter specialists. The committee will identify how expenses related to retaining subject ,atter specialists will be paid
Confidentiality
While the committee does not discuss client-specific information, there is still a need for committee members to respect any privileged information they receive in their advisory role (e.g. vendor and procurement information, business contracts, and the manner/methods of conducting SOHS business)
OCRC members must not use privileged information for any purpose outside of undertaking the work of the OCRC. It can be helpful to consider that, sometimes, the obligation of confidence does not reside as much in the information itself, but in the relationship between te parties exchanging the information. Committee members have a “duty of fidelity” consisting of three main duties:
- A duty to maintain information acquired through their committee duties in confidence
- A duty not to use information obtained as a committee member to compete with the SOHS
- A duty to maintain confidentiality even beyond a committee members term
The committee chair will not fail to ensure the non-committee personnel (e.g. subject-matter specialists) are fully familiarized with the committee’s Terms of Reference
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