Somerset West health centre given provincial OK as addiction treatment hub

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The Ontario government has approved the transition of the Somerset Community Health Centre into a new addiction treatment centre from its former home as a drug-injection site.

An additional 65 permanent housing units will be included as part of the grand plan for the HART — Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment — Hub, under which the centre will work with 23 partner agencies in Ottawa to help those in recovery gain access to housing, counselling, mental health, education and employment services.

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The centre, which will have drug-withdrawal medication on hand, is expected to be running by April 1.

“It’s a really important chance to service the community, with a deeper reach in some ways,” said Suzanne Obiorah, executive director of the Somerset West Community Health Centre. “It will provide direct access to supportive housing and basic needs. It will get conversations going, but at a loss of the safe-consumption site.”

In 2024, the provincial government announced it would close all drug-consumption sites located within 200 metres of schools and community centres. That included Somerset West.

The centre was, however, invited to support an application to provide a HART Hub, part of the government’s $378-million Safer Streets, Stronger Communities Act and the Community Care and Recovery Act.

On Jan. 2, Ontario announced that Somerset West and eight other locations had been approved to go ahead with the transition.

It’s expected an additional 10 sites will be announced within the next few weeks. A group including the Pinecrest-Community Health Centre and the Ottawa Paramedic Service has also applied to the province to consider a hub to help service the city’s west end.

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Each centre will receive an average of $6.3 million in provincial government funding to help with start-up costs.

“This provincial funding is a critical step towards supporting community needs for addiction treatment,” Mayor Mark Sutliffe said, in a statement released by the province. “Ottawa has a strong commitment to helping residents through the recovery journey. This funding will help to keep our communities safe and to provide wrap-around services to those who can benefit from addiction treatments.”

Obiorah said the additional government funding would allow Somerset West to “scale up” many of its existing core support counselling programs. The next few months will be spent altering the community centre to embrace the new HART Hub.

“It’s a completely different model in some ways,” Obiorah said. “We’ll be talking about what recovery looks like and changing the space to support those conversations.”

Sylvia Jones, Deputy Premier and Minister of Health, said Ontario residents had expressed safety concerns about the drug-injection sites located close to children close to where children could be found.

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“We have heard loud and clear from families across Ontario that drug-injection sites near schools and child-care centres are making our communities less safe,” Jones said. “Through these nine new Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment Hubs, we are taking the next step in our plan to keep communities safe while improving access to mental health and addictions services.”

The government media release said the new hubs “will be eligible, on average, to receive up to four times more funding to support treatment and recovery under the model than they receive from the province as a consumption site.”

At the same time, however, there remain concerns for those who previously utilized the drug-consumption site at Somerset West.

According to Obiorah, 590 people took advantage of its drug-consumption services in 2024. She said it was hard to estimate how many would take advantage of the new HART Hub.

“We are worred about folks who are not interested in the HART Hub, some of the people who have been using our services for the past seven or eight years,” she said.

“We do have a strong outreach team and we’ll be meeting people where they are.”

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The aim is to engage in conversations with those living on the streets and struggling with addiction. Naloxone kits, which can help reverse overdoses, will also be distributed.

In a November memo provided to the Ottawa Citizen, medical officer of health Dr. Vera Etches and Clara Freire, the city’s general manager of community and social services, said they supported the HART Hubs, but also expressed a continuing need for supervised drug-consumption sites in the city.

“Open substance use in public spaces in Ottawa will continue unless people have somewhere safer to use substances, whether inhaling or injecting, and unless people have access to mental health and addictions treatment when they need it,” the memo read. “Ottawa Public Health is committed to ensuring that people who rely on supervised consumptions and treatment services continue to receive the support they need.”

kwarren@postmedia.com

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