Team | Jeu : Aide et référence

Executive Director

Mrs. Pierrette Gagné, Executive Director, Information and Referral Center of Greater Montréal (GHR Manager)

Executive Director since July 2013, Pierrette Gagné has brought about a spirit of change throughout the organization that manages three information and referral helplines: 211 Greater Montréal, Gambling: Help and Referral, Drugs: Help and Referral, as well as, the TeleCounseling for Excessive Gamblers programme. She, in fact, has led IRCGM into making numerous strategic and technological shifts in order to ensure its sustainability. Being a natural leader and unifier, her employees have gladly followed her, thus allowing them to acquire many new skills. Learn more.

The managers of our Drugs: Help and Referral and Gambling: Help and Referral specialized addiction helplines

Mrs. Hélène Hamel, Director of the Specialized Addiction Helplines

Mrs. Hélène Hamel has been Director of the Specialized Addiction Helplines since 2019, but has been the team’s backbone since 1999! She has held, one after the other, positions of Counselor, Helplines Coordinator and Coordinator of the TeleCounseling for Excessive Gamblers programme, exercising her expertise in addiction counseling, as well as, team management. Strong-willed and kind-hearted, her involvement in the community mirrors the kindness shown to her team of counselors. Learn more.

Mrs. Maxime Miranda, Development Coordinator

Mrs. Miranda is involved in getting our services known across the province by developing partnerships that will allow sharing our expertise with key players in the health and social services and community organizations fields. Internally, she supports the skill development of our counselors with attention and caring. She also trains our new counselors while ensuring their professional growth. Learn more.

Mrs. Nancy Rocha, Manager of the TeleCounseling Programme for Excessive Gamblers

Mrs. Nancy Rocha is manager of the TeleCounseling Programme for Excessive Gamblers. As such, she supervises the counselors, ensures the proper functioning of the follow-ups, trains new team members, develops the programme and its continuously evolving services and builds collaborations to better meet the specific needs of participants. She also shares her expertise on gamblers, as well as, the intricacies of remote counseling. Learn more.

Our counselors

The Gambling: Help and Referral team is made up of about a dozen counselors. They hold Bachelor’s degrees in psychology, criminology or social work. The majority of them have completed a Certificate in Addiction (certificat en toxicomanie) while others have completed Certificates in Mental Health Intervention, Youth Intervention, Victimology, etc. Over the last few years, our team grew with the addition of counselors that have completed Collegial programmes in Social Work or Special Care Counseling. Other than for education, new counselors are hired for fulfilling the following criteria:

Possessing excellent knowledge of counseling techniques.
Being able to show empathy, being mature, responsible, as well as, working well within a team.
Being completely non-judgmental.