Women in need of a long-term program to recover from substance use will soon have an option to stay on the Island.
The province announced funding Thursday for 20 beds for women in Our Place Society’s New Roads Therapeutic Recovery Community in View Royal.
The facility, a former youth detention centre, currently has 47 beds for men recovering from substance use who take part in a nine- to 24-month program.
The new funding will allow Our Place to renovate the space to add 20 beds for women and operate a program based on the existing model that will be entirely separate from the men, said Cheryl Diebel, who is the director of the current program and will also be the director of the women’s program.
It will be the first long-term recovery option for women on the Island, she said, and is expected to open at the end of this summer.
People taking part in the program have complex struggles with addiction and need more support to recover than a shorter 3o- to 90-day program can offer, Diebel said.
Women in need of a long-term program currently have to go to the mainland for treatment, uprooting them from their communities and making it more difficult to transition back after treatment, Diebel said.
The therapeutic program focuses on connecting people with the wider community through educational opportunities and employment, Diebel said, and some men begin working while completing the program.
About a dozen men from the program have gone on to work at Our Place in maintenance and as housing support workers, she said.
People in the program can take their Grade 12 equivalency, take part in therapy, learn how to care for their health, learn to regulate their emotions and integrate back into society without the need for substances.
To participate in the program, people must be 19 or older, have moderate to severe substance use and be highly motivated to change their lives, committing to up to two years of treatment.
About 35 to 50 per cent of the men at New Roads have come out of the criminal justice system, Diebel said.
The women’s community will have slightly different programming, with a stronger focus on family therapy, family reunification and intimate-partner violence, she said.
The province also announced funding for an additional 160 treatment and recovery beds across B.C. to improve access to treatment closer to home.
“People need to be able to access treatment and recovery services close to where they live, without worrying about how to pay for it,” Premier David Eby said in a statement. About 100 beds are already available, and the rest are expected to be ready later this year.
The amount of funding for the New Roads women’s program has not yet been finalized, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions said.
The funding comes from a $73-million investment over three years to increase access to free treatment and recovery services for people with addiction. The province is also extending funding provided in 2020 for 105 existing beds to the end of 2027.
In the fall, the province committed $4.39 million to New Roads to support the program.
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