The Ontario government recently granted almost $1 million to three local organizations to combat the opioid crisis in Guelph and Wellington County.
Announced on Nov. 9 at Stonehenge Therapeutic Community in Guelph, the $971,000 in funding is part of a larger $2.3-million commitment in the Waterloo-Wellington region.
Guelph MPP Liz Sandals said community-based addiction organizations – and not just hospitals – need support to respond to the opioid crisis.
In total the Ontario government is spending $222 million province-wide as part of the Ontario Strategy to Prevent Opioid Addiction and Overdose.
The $971,000 will go to three organizations:
– Stonehenge Therapeutic Community, $711,000;
– Guelph Community Health Centre (Guelph CHC), $175,000; and
– Homewood, $85,000.
“This funding includes supporting family physicians to help prevent opioid addiction,” Waterloo Wellington Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) CEO Bruce Lauckner said at the Stonehenge announcement.
“This morning we announced that our E-Health Centre of Excellence, which is located in Waterloo, will be providing some enhancements to keep track of medical records so our family physicians can track … and better manage prescribing because we also have to deal with this on the front end.”
Lauckner added, “It’s about making sure health professionals know what resources are available and when and how they can immediately support their patients.
“It’s about preventing overdose.”
Homewood representative Brian Furlong explained, “The opioid use disorder is not a single-incident event, it’s a chronic relapsing illness … we’ve got to have things in place to get one beyond just managing the acute episode.”
Stonehenge
Lauckner said the Stonehenge funding will go towards “community withdrawal support services and enhancements to that, additional residential treatment capacity, a dedicated rural community withdrawal worker to support care for clients in Wellington … Peer support follow up and also the rapid access addiction clinic (RAAC) and expansion of that clinic.”
Stonehenge executive director Heather Kerr said the organization is ready for the funding.
“Stonehenge, along with our partners … are so very pleased to have ongoing funding for the Guelph, Puslinch, Wellington RAAC,” Kerr said.
“The clinic saves lives. It saves lives every week; it changes lives every week so to know that … we’re going to go from one day a week to two days a week … is incredibly exciting.”
In addition to supporting the RAAC, one of the funding goals was to make the service more accessible to Wellington County residents, Kerr said in an interview following the presentation.
“We put in some transportation dollars and [said] ‘okay, can we pay family members if they’re bringing someone to the RAAC?’” she said.
“Can we do a taxi chit or a community care bus ride? Can we do something to bring folks down to the RAAC?”
However, Kerr said there isn’t funding available to create an RAAC in Wellington.
“The other thing we said to the LHIN was, ‘how do we reach into the county because having to transport and shift people is not always helpful.’
“How can we reach into the county to provide some solutions in their community, in the way that makes sense to them?”
The solution is the proposed hiring of a community support worker dedicated solely to Wellington County.
“They may be connected to the emergency departments, they may be connecting to people calling through family members or a family doctor and what they do is a thorough assessment, often engaging a family doctor, to determine, [does] … the nature of [this person’s] addiction and the nature of their health make it appropriate to withdraw within the community?
“As opposed to needing to go to Grand River Hospital residential program or withdrawing in one of your rural hospitals.”
If it is deemed appropriate to withdraw in the community then the community support worker will be present throughout the whole process.
Another funding goal is to have peer support available to county residents.
The idea is for peers to be notified through first responders and physicians about individuals who have overdosed.
“The peer would go to the hospital, to the ER and engage with them in that moment of crisis to provide support for them, for their family because it’s that moment of scariness that often shifts people’s readiness to engage and that engagement could be anything,” Kerr said.
They may talk about naloxone kits, how to use drugs safely, what help is available for changing substance use and what treatment options exist.
“It’s offering them the whole continuum of options. They don’t have to say ‘I want to stop using drugs,’ it might just be saying, how can we help them so an overdose doesn’t happen again,” Kerr said. “Because often people are overdosing over and over again.”
The goal is to have peer workers who have had an addiction but are now in recovery. Kerr said one of the peer support workers already working in Guelph doesn’t hesitate to tell families that she has overdosed on opioids and how she has used naloxone and what it’s like.
“That lived experience, it brings a credibility to the room that we don’t have; no matter how much experience and education, it’s just not quite the same, especially for family members too,” she said.
“To see someone in front of them who’s been in that spot and gone through recovery and is healthy and well gives them some hope.”
Guelph Community Health Centre
The Guelph Community Health Centre (CHC) was allocated $175,000, which will “strengthen community partnerships and outreach efforts to engage with our at-risk populations,” Lauckner said.
“It will also fund two crisis beds, available 24/7, to provide a safe alternative to emergency departments and link patients immediately to community supports, including appropriate withdrawal management.”
Raechelle Devereaux of the Guelph CHC said the beds are for people who aren’t sick enough to be admitted to the hospital for their mental health or addiction issue but also aren’t well enough to be in a shelter.
“So they cycled and spent a lot of time sleeping in our spaces … and so what happens when that goes on for a few days, you become less well and you actually can sometimes enter into psychosis and now there’s a safety issue,” she said.
“And it ultimately was an issue that, this is important, these people are important, they matter and we need a solution.”
The two beds at Wyndam House will be fully staffed all day, every day and will be supported by emergency medical personnel and an addiction clinician, Devereaux said.
Homewood
Homewood in Guelph will receive $85,000.
“(The) funding will enhance supports in rural Wellington and provide education [for] rural emergency department physicians and nurses around opioid withdrawal, around harm reduction strategies and other supports that are available to residents,” Lauckner said.
“So that will have a nice positive impact for our residents in Wellington.”
Furlong said it takes the entire community to care for individuals with addiction.
“Nobody can do this alone and if we come together as a collective, we’ll do much more together than any of us will ever be able to do alone,” he said.
He added the opioid crisis will likely get worse before it gets better.
“Moving from the west coast east and from the U.S. up is a set of issues that’s not going to be pretty in terms of addiction issues and we’re just at the very, very beginning,” he said.
“So if we can get ourselves positioned in a unique kind of way and get some options in place, we’re going to be better prepared for an enormous problem that truly we are really only seeing the very tip of the iceberg so far.”
