Nine new Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hubs have opened across the province just one day after the closure of Consumption and Treatment Service (CTS) sites.
Two of them, the Guelph Community Health Centre at 176 Wyndham Street North and Community Healthcaring Kitchener-Waterloo at 44 Francis Street South in Kitchener, were up and running on Tuesday.
The openings coincide with the provincial government’s decision to close 10 CTS sites. A court injunction was granted on Friday that would have allowed the sites to stay open until a Charter challenge can make its way through the court. However, nine out of the 10 sites agreed to shut down on Monday due to other complications, including lease agreements and unmet funding needs.
What is a HART Hub?
The newly-opened HART Hubs will offer mental health and addictions support, housing and case management for income, employment and social services.
The biggest difference, compared to the former CTS sites, is HART Hubs will not offer safe consumption services.
For people who had been using the CTS site in Guelph, there will be some familiar faces at the new HART Hub.
“Because we were operating a Consumption and Treatment Services sites up until yesterday, the transition looks a little bit different for our site,” said Melissa Kwiatkowski, CEO of the Guelph Community Health Centre.
She was the former operator of Guelph’s CTS location.
“All those services that were non-consumption services are continuing today under our HART Hub program. Clients can continue to come into our doors today just like they were yesterday,” Kwiatkowski said. “They’ll see the same trusted members of their care team that they saw yesterday.”
Meanwhile in Kitchener, the transition is ongoing.
“We are online with some of those services at the moment,” said Tara Groves-Taylor, Community Healthcaring Kitchener-Waterloo’s CEO.
“We have our intake available, we have our care coordination available, we also have the Rapid Access to Addictions Medicine clinic coming online,” she said.
Some housing supports aren’t available yet, but Groves-Taylor anticipates they will be in the next few months.
“The transition beds may be a little further down the line. We’re hoping to have those open some time around June.”
Groves-Taylor also said their counseling services, in partnership with the Canadian Mental Health Association, will soon be available.
A full list of services is available online.
A shift in focus
When the province announced plans for HART Hubs across Ontario they claimed CTS sites’ lack of focus on treatment left people trapped in a cycle of addiction.
The hubs, they explained, would instead focus on providing a sense of stability in the lives of people looking for help. Clients are promised rehabilitation treatment, in addition to mental health services and addictions care.
“The journey looks different. It’s not one rehab journey. It’s not one recovery journey. It looks very different depending on who is coming in and what their degree of readiness is that day,” Groves-Taylor explained.
“Maybe you’re ready today and you’re going to walk into the Rapid Access for Addictions Medicine Service and that’s where your journey will begin. Maybe you’re coming out of a rehabilitation program for your substance use and you’re going into a transitional bed.”
Groves-Taylor said the HART Hub teams will help people navigate the process during what can be a very confusing time in their lives.
“If people start on their journey, there is someone walking with them to connect them to all of the different services and all of the different options throughout their journey, so they don’t get lost along the way,” Groves-Taylor said.
Consumption concerns
Region of Waterloo councillors questioned the HART Hub teams last month, voicing concerns that the closure of CTS sites could cause an increase in deaths, overdoses and publicly discarded needles, as well as put additional strain on paramedics, hospitals and police.
“We want to make sure people who are currently accessing safe consumption could see themselves in the HART Hub,” Groves-Taylor said at the time. “[That] we make it really easy for them to do so and that we let them know how to do it [and] where to do it.”
In Guelph, Kwiatkowski said they will continue to push for more options.
“We really believe that the investments that are coming with these HART Hubs are really needed in terms of a full continuum of service. We also believe in harm reduction services as a really important part of the continuum. We will continue to advocate with our partners for a full and comprehensive continuum of service and really taking a both approach instead of an either/or approach,” she said.
