EDI Speaker Series with Andrea Watters Westbrook. Toronto Community Crisis Service: Alternatives for calling the police for mental health crisis situations

Andrea W. Westbrook (she/her) is a PhD Student at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto. She received her Master of Social Work degree, with a specialization in health and mental health, from the University of Toronto and her Bachelor of Social Work degree from Toronto Metropolitan University. She also holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from OCAD University, where she explored the integration of her social justice and arts-based practices. Her PhD research is focused on non-policing approaches for community-based mental health crisis interventions.  

Outside of her academic work, Andrea is currently the manager of the Toronto Community Crisis Service (TCCS) team in the downtown central and downtown east neighbourhoods of Toronto. Andrea has been a registered social worker for over 10 years, predominantly in the downtown east of Toronto, working within the HIV sector, in community mental health, and with people who are street-involved. Throughout her work, she has seen the importance of delivering a diverse range of support needs and styles, and she loves discussing how we can be creative within our approaches to this work. She feels privileged to be invited into the communities she gets to work in and to have personal stories of strength and resiliency shared with her. She doesn’t take this privilege for granted. 

From April-October, Andrea can most often be found in the 500-level of the SkyDome.

Email: andrea.westbrook@mail.utoronto.ca