Split decision: New youth mental health centre now set for both Moncton and Campbellton

The staffing shortage in health care has led to another U-turn on the location of a promised centre of excellence for youth mental health.

The proposed facility, which was initially expected to be in the Moncton area, was shifted to Campbellton by the Liberal government of Brian Gallant and then back to Moncton by the Higgs government.

Now half thebeds will be located in Campbellton and the other half will be in Moncton.

"If governments are too rigid and don't change their decisionsthey get accused of that. And here we've gone [with] consultationsand made the right decision, and landed with the right balance," Health Minister Bruce Fitch said Tuesday.

The existing youth mental health unit in Campbellton will become permanent and continue operating after the Moncton centre opens in 2026.

That opening for the Moncton centre is six years later than the original date planned for the proposed centre of excellence.

"The worst public policy decision..."

Bernard Richard, the province's former child and youth advocate who initially recommended a centre of excellence in 2008, issued a report in 2011 calling for it to be constructed in an urban centre near a university research facility.

But when it announced funding in 2015, the Gallant government opted to put it in Campbellton, a move Richard criticized as "the worst public policy decision" he'd seen in a long time.

In 2019 the PC government announced the centre would go to Moncton after all, even though the facility being built in Campbellton was 90 per cent finished.

Then-health minister Ted Flemming said a Moncton location would "increase access to the resources required to best meet the needs of young people struggling with mental health and addiction issues."

But Fitch said Tuesday the severe shortage of health-care workers in Moncton now along with relatively stable staffing in Campbellton prompted another rethink.

"For this particular section [in Campbellton], the staff has been very, very stable, and if you move that down to Moncton you'll need to find a significant number of staff to do that," he said.

The minister said "a certain expertise" had developed in Campbellton, with a child psychologist on staff at the Restigouche Regional Hospital able to provide support and other trained staff in place.

"This will ease some of the strain on hiring more people for that particular establishment," he said.

The initial plan was for the centre to have 15 beds. Fitch says with eight beds now plannedfor Campbellton and eight for Moncton, that's a net gain of one bed.