Guelph’s Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment Hub won’t open as planned on April 1, according to the Guelph Community Health Centre.
Why? The province hasn’t provided a funding agreement yet.
“Due to the government’s decision to call an early election, a lot of things have been put on hold,” said Melissa Kwiatkowski, chief executive officer of the Guelph Community Health Centre.
“We’ve been waiting for critical funding decisions to ensure a smooth transition for services,” she said. “But we still do not have a funding agreement.”
At this point, she said so many of the decisions that needed to be made in order to be fully operational by April 1 won’t happen in time, though some of the services, like support from outreach and healthcare teams, will be available.
Despite the delays, she expects the Consumption and Treatment Services site to be shuttered by March 31 as planned. Still, due to a lack of communication from the province around a timeline, she said they’re unsure when the HART Hub will be fully functional.
“In taking a really rushed approach and then pausing on providing clarity, the government has created significant risk in communities,” she said.
Last year, the province passed an act prohibiting the operation of consumption and treatment services located within 200 metres of schools and licensed child-care centres. Guelph’s site is one of nine to be transitioned into a HART Hub, with a focus on treatment rather than safe supply or consumption services.
Guelph’s HART Hub application (which will be located at the community health centre) was approved in January, and intends to provide treatment, housing, and support for adults and youth aged 16 and up with complex needs.
Many of those services for mental health and addictions support are already offered at the centre, making the Guelph CHC well-positioned for parts of the transition.
Stonehenge currently runs a safe bed program with four part-time beds, and partnering with them, Kwiatkowski said their goal with the HART Hub “is to increase that capacity to eight full-time crisis beds and eight full-time withdrawal management beds,” though they won’t be open April 1 either.
A crisis bed is for mental health stabilization, for someone who doesn’t need hospital-level care but needs 24/7 support to stabilize.
“But we are removing a really critical component of the care continuum, and it’s going to leave a really critical gap in the community that the HART Hub cannot fill,” she said.
“Certain services the government explicitly said cannot be part of the HART Hub include needle exchange, drug checking and safer supply or alternate prescribing programs.”
However, they’re able to make referrals to those programs, they just can’t be part of the hub.
“So we are working to ensure that whatever harm reduction services are left in the community are protected and that our clients have easy referral pathways to those services.”
“We expect to see more drug poisonings happening in public spaces, more needles and syringes in public spaces, so we’ve been trying our best to equip the community to manage the consequences of this,” she said.
That includes resources online as well as additional training for naloxone administration and de-escalation, which she said many businesses have been signing up for with Welcoming Streets.
At the same time, partner organizations like Sanguen are looking at increasing their outreach services in response, though no plans have been finalized yet.
“Ahead of the CTS closure Sanguen has been partnering with others in the Wellington Guelph Drug Strategy to offer increased opportunities for overdose response and naloxone education in the community and with partnering agencies,” said Julie Kalbfleisch, director of fundraising and communications with Sanguen.
‘“We will also continue to focus on overdose prevention and response (including naloxone training) through our van service.”
The timing of the CTS closures couldn’t be worse, as it coincides with the U.S. dispute, Kwiatkoski said: increased border security historically coincides with increased drug toxicity.
It’s something she said we’re already seeing: The Toronto Drug Checking Service Report, which often reflects the drug supply locally, recently saw a 68 per cent increase of expected fentanyl samples containing a veterinary tranquilizer.
“This is the highest proportion that they’ve found since they first detected them in September of 2020. There’s also an increasing proportion of samples containing benzodiazepine-related drugs,” she said.
“All of this is happening at a time when critical life saving services are being closed, and we don’t have the tools to mitigate those risks,” she said.
Kwiatkoski referenced the auditor general’s report “which indicated that this whole transition lacked the proper scale, planning, etc. to be successful,” she said. “I think we’re seeing the results of that, how quickly these decisions were made without understanding the full implications.”
She noted service providers weren’t engaged in consultation beforehand to inform the province of any potential impacts, and that they could have worked together to properly plan and mitigate those impacts.
“We’re just focusing on trying to do what’s best for our clients and our community, which is educating people, trying to ensure that some level of service is open on April 1 and that our clients still have somewhere to come for support and help and access to a range of healthcare services.”