As Island Health makes plans to staff the city’s first federally approved supervised consumption site, service providers say the new facility should not take away from other harm-reduction supports.
The supervised consumption service is set to open in late spring 2018, after renovations are complete at 941 Pandora Ave. It will be next to Our Place Society, which offers services to Victoria’s vulnerable citizens.
“Everything is on schedule and on budget, which is why we put the call out to service providers with time to prepare,” said Dr. Richard Stanwick, the health authority’s chief medical health officer.
The health authority issued two requests for proposals Tuesday, inviting community service providers to submit plans to provide harm-reduction workers and staff who have personal “lived experience” with addiction. The deadline is Jan. 19. The 10-booth site would need staff seven days a week for 12 hours each day and would be overseen by Island Health. Harm-reduction workers would interact with clients, oversee injection drug use, and provide education and supports. Staff who have experienced addiction will provide peer support.
“We’re not dictating staff numbers but leaving it up to the providers’ proposals,” Stanwick said. Both positions require experience and pay accordingly, he said.
The supervised consumption service would be the first of its kind on the Island to operate legally. Nine overdose-prevention sites opened across the Island last year as an emergency service to help curb illicit drug overdose deaths, which have killed 2,193 people in B.C. since 2016.
“We’re losing people to the overdose crisis at a devastating rate, and I have seen first-hand how essential supervised consumption services are to saving lives and offering vital supports to people who use illegal drugs,” said Judy Darcy, B.C.’s minister of mental health and addictions, in a statement. No deaths have taken place in an overdose-prevention site in B.C.
Katrina Jensen, executive director of AIDS Vancouver Island, said that while supervised consumption services are important, “we need to maintain the harm-reduction services we have for the broader population.”
She noted that AVI serves about 2,000 clients who access a range of harm-reduction services, from clean drug supplies and support groups to education and shelter.
“Of those, only about 300 use the overdose-prevention site,” she said. “And many people that use our services likely wouldn’t use the supervised consumption site. That’s why it’s important to maintain a breadth of community-based harm-reduction services.”
Jensen said she is concerned the new facility could lead to funds being drawn from existing services or force them to close.
Stanwick said that is not in the plans. “My understanding is that we will not be stealing from community services to fund this,” he said. “The idea is to augment services, not replace them.”
But Stanwick said some of those decisions — such as whether to maintain the overdose-prevention sites — will rely on government funding. It is not clear if they will stay open once the emergency ministerial order that allows them to operate ends.
Stanwick said he expects Island Health’s second application, for supervised consumption services in the supported housing building at 844 Johnson St., to be approved any day. It is operating as an overdose-prevention site for residents and guests only.
