Our Initiatives

HeretoHelp provides trusted mental health and substance use information. As the need for this information grows, we continue to add new content for BC, Canadian, and global audiences including: Indigenous, seniors, women, men, young people, LGBTQ2+, and cross-cultural communities.

2020/21 content by the numbers:

Highlights:

• Gambling Q&A resource
• Resource on the intersection between eating disorders, feeding disorders, and anxiety disorders
• Resource on a health promotion approach to MHSU and homelessness
• Updated Alzheimer’s disease info sheet
• Coping Kit – From Grief to Action

• Updated toolkits
• Covid-19 info sheets

• Issues of the Within Reach newsletter – to 1,098 subscribers

• Resources on schizophrenia and psychosis updated

Information Referral

Our Help Desk is a lifeline for people who are struggling to navigate the maze of mental health and substance use resources. Inaccurate and untrustworthy information can be harmful. Credible information, however, can open new paths, reduce stigma, provide support, and offer hope to people who are navigating challenges.

Highlights

In 2020/21, we:

Responded to 2,344 information referral requests by phone and email – a 39% increase from the previous year

Updated 90% of the articles in our knowledgebase. This is the repository of current mental health and substance use information that our teams use to answer public queries.

Circulated 2,303 informational and promotional resources through

• 54 publication requests from our online store
• 121 information referral requests

Recruited six information referral volunteers

Governance

The HeretoHelp leaders work together to help people better prevent and manage mental health and substance use problems, and live healthier lives. Good governance is essential to fulfilling our vision. In the past year, we held five highly engaged and responsive committee meetings with rotating agency chairs.

Highlights

What we learned in 2020/21:

Information requests are on the rise
Our information referral requests have grown by 39% over last year and more than doubled in the past two years. Nearly 30% of our responses were outside of our desired time frame, due to this increase in demand. Continued growth at the same resource levels will contribute to a higher increase in responses outside of the desired timeframe of 3-5 business days.

Most visitors want self-directed resources
Our survey showed that HeretoHelp visitors are most interested in:

• Skills to better manage problems
• Screenings
• Q&As
• Self-paced materials
• Personal stories
• Information sheets and workbooks.

There was also moderate interest in online support groups, event calendars, podcasts and live webinars. In our survey, Canadian readers identified a need for more up-front crisis messaging, better links to contact information, better organization of Q&A pages, and requested more advanced information. Work has already begun on site improvements, including an events calendar and incorporating more visuals.

The website continues to grow
We need to continually improve and update our vast repository of evidence-based information. Although we have a full-time editorial coordinator and a volunteer working on site improvements, the BC Partners often struggle to regularly update materials such as info sheets and workbooks, due to limits in staff capacity. We would like HeretoHelp to be a well-known destination for mental health and substance use information across BC — both among service providers and the general public.

Future recommendations:

1. We need more staffing resources to meet the growing demand
2. BC Partners should continually improve the HeretoHelp contact information and navigation, in keeping with survey feedback – especially from British Columbians
3. BC Partners needs to develop a sustainable plan for HeretoHelp that addresses:
   • a. decision-making around new resource development
   • b. accountability for updating existing material, based on our evidence-based guidelines
   • c. referral to BCP agency websites for additional and expanded content
4. BC Partners needs to assess current impact and develop a clear plan to increase visibility and recognition.