Cree Health boost – new CPS director and mental health hirings

Kathy Shecapio says she enjoys being in the middle of the action. It’s a good thing: hired as the new director of Cree Patient Services (CPS) in April, she’s had her hands full revamping a busy service that has seen a few problems over the past years.

“A lot of people don’t realize what it’s like here when you get to work,” Shecapio said over the phone from the Montreal office of the Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay (CBHSSJB). “You hit the ground running.”

She quickly learned how hard CPS staff work to obtain health services for Cree patients and ensure they are taken care of when they travel for treatment.

“You see how much people care,” Shecapio said. “Everyone from the head of CPS, to the nurses, the technicians – they’re exhausted, their eyes glaze over, but they’re still doing the best they can and giving it their all.”

Shecapio comes to the position with plenty of life and work experience to draw upon. The first five years of her life were spent in Oujé-Bougoumou, where her father hunted on his trapline, a time that Shecapio described as “heaven on earth.”

“You wake up with the sun and you go to bed with the sun,” Shecapio recalled. “You live with the rhythm of the land and the seasons.”

After earning university degrees in Industrial Relations and Financial Management, Shecapio worked to promote Aboriginal employment with the Cree Regional Authority. She then ran Cree training and employment programs for Niskamoon to ensure Hydro-Québec met hiring requirements under the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement.

She was promoted to Director General of Niskamoon before leaving to launch her own project management and communications firm, Momentume Inc., in 2013.

Shecapio started writing her latest chapter at the CPS office in Val-d’Or – an experience she describes as significantly different from her current workplace in downtown Montreal.

“We’re in a big, busy city – that’s the main difference,” she noted. “Instead of it taking five minutes to drive anywhere, things are tougher for our staff and our drivers. While we do have rooming houses and resources like the new superhospital at our disposal, it also puts enormous strain on us. Traffic, construction – all those things of city life make it harder to deliver the services we want to offer.”

What will change now that Shecapio is director at CPS? The main thing is that Shecapio says that CPS is listening to its patients and community like never before.

“The sense I’ve gotten is that patients felt like they were getting shut down by CPS. That needs to change. Now we look at each case and ask, ‘How would we treat this person in an ideal world?’ And we start from there.”

Mental health nurses hired

The CBHSSJB made another big move in May with the appointment of five mental health nurses.

The new mental health team consists of Maryse Doyon (Mistissini), Pauline Leblanc (Wemindji), Adnane Bendada (Eastmain), Martine Vincent (Nemaska) and Diane Blueboy (Chisasibi). Sandra Thibault, a specialist mental health nurse clinician, will act as a coach.

The nurses began a week of training in mid-May, including a cultural safety class with psychologist Suzy Goodleaf, and a lesson in Cree history by Solomon Awashish. The nurses will start working in their new home communities over the next month.

The new hirees took part in further training in Chisasibi May 24-27, including a cultural competency training session that surveyed the history and traditions of Eeyou Istchee, looking at residential school experiences and other sources of trauma, as well as the sources of strength that have helped the Cree in the past.

“There was an actual walking-out ceremony where the nurses were able to participate and learn about what we do in our territories,” said Juliana Matoush-Snowboy, mental health coordinator for the CBHSSJB in Chisasibi.

“We finished getting feedback from one employee who was just brought in. She felt overwhelmed. She didn’t know the customs. That’s why this cultural competency training is so important.”

The hiring of the five new nurses marks the first time the CBHSSJB has been able to devote staff specifically to mental health. The organization says it hopes to include art therapy and ceremonial therapies as part of healing plans for patients in the future.