More treatment beds and services for people struggling with addiction are coming to Vancouver Island and the South Coast.
The province has announced $132-million in funding over the next three years for treatment and recovery services.
The initiatives on the island include new regional residential treatment beds to support women from the Island Health region, and the extension of the Indigenous-led (Gwa’sala-‘nakwaxda’xw) partnership program for alcohol treatment and recovery in Port Hardy.
“When a person living with addiction is ready to take a step toward recovery, we must ensure services are available when and where they need them,” said Sheila Malcolmson, minister of mental health and addictions.
This province says the funding “will increase services across all regions of the province to strengthen the full continuum of substance-use treatment and recovery services, including withdrawal management, transition, and assessment, treatment and aftercare services.”
To achieve this, it will create more than 65 new or enhanced services throughout B.C., add more than 130 full-time-equivalent staff and open roughly 195 new substance-use treatment beds.
Precise numbers will be confirmed through request-for-proposals processes. Updates will be provided along the way.
Meanwhile, in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, the province is adding:
- new recovery wellness community centres in two locations, to help people on their ongoing recovery journey, and
- a new peer-led, trauma-informed education program for people with lived and living experience of addiction in the region.
