County of Simcoe seeks provincial funding for new addiction treatment centre

The County of Simcoe has thrown its hat into the ring with the Ministry of Health to be one of 10 communities in Ontario to receive funding for a Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hub.

The County, alongside several health care partners, including the Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care and Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH), announced its application submission on Wednesday.

The community hub would support residents identified by the County battling homelessness and addiction by providing health care and clinical treatment.

For Barrie resident Liam Edward O’Rourke, the cycle of hardship is a challenge.

“Struggling for eight years, yeah, it’s constantly getting clean, falling back, getting clean, falling back,” he said.

Tom Iviney is in a similar situation. “Everybody just pushes you under the rug. Nobody wants to deal with us. It’s difficult.”

The County hopes to receive $6.3 million over three years with one-time startup funding of $1.8 million to establish a HART Hub locally.

“We’re getting an opportunity to partner with our health care partners to deliver those health care services that are needed by that 30 per cent of people experiencing homelessness here in the County of Simcoe,” said Mina Fayez-Bahgat, the County’s general manager of social and community services.

The plan does not include a Supervised Consumption Site, which the province has banned from operating. Instead, the Ford government is moving forward with a different model as it attempts to take on the opioid crisis.

According to Health Canada, fentanyl kills thousands of people every year, with those living on the streets the most susceptible to overdose and death.

“Ultimately, mental health, addiction, homelessness is multifaceted. There are so many aspects to it that we have to look at comprehensively and that’s the whole point of this HART Hub application is to say we can do a better job. We have the services and with some added support we can make something better,” said Brian Irving, RVH’s addiction services manager.

The County of Simcoe and its community partners hope to have a response from the ministry on its application by the end of the year, however, the province hasn’t given a definitive timeline for when approvals will be granted.

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