New provincial treatment centre to be located at Salvation Army Centre of Hope
HART Hub will offer addiction recovery and treatment support as well as mental health care
A provincial treatment centre and homeless shelter will operate out of the Salvation Army's Centre of Hope in downtown London, officials announced Tuesday.
One of 18 Homeless Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hubs earmarked across the province, the London location will be operational by April 1.
Existing facilities at the Centre of Hope, which already operates an emergency shelter, warm meals, withdrawal management and recovery support, will be used to help people who need help with their mental health and substance use disorders.
"This facility is a natural choice. It meets the immediate needs of individuals seeking stability and treatment while allowing for connection to a continuum of services to prepare them for the next step in their journey," said Dean Astolfi, a vice president at the Canadian Mental Health Association Thames Valley, which will operate the new hub.
Thirty-three new beds are expected to open as part of the HART hub. However, Astolfi said a total of 60 beds would be part of the hub.
"We're getting the 33 off the ground right away and quickly turning over the other beds through the recovery centre that exists at Salvation Army," he said.
An additional 60 supportive housing units will also be created in the first year, officials said.
'Hope and dignity'
"We have always worked to foster hope, dignity, and positive change," said Centre of Hope head Jon DeActis.
"By integrating HART Hub services into our facility, we can continue that mission and deepen our impact in the community. This partnership is a way to support people in London with the resources and care they need."
According to Astolfi, people will be able to get crisis support, help with basic needs, health care, counselling, addiction recovery, and housing and income at the hub.
"The hub itself is intended to get people stabilized. It's not intended to be long-term housing. When you come into a hub, you have that space where you have shelter, you have your needs met, you have the supports you need," he said.
The supports available at the hubs are designed to transition people using their services into supportive housing, 60 units of which CMHA will create as part of the HART hub plan. As for where the new supportive housing units might go, Astolfi said they'll appear through a mixture of CMHA-run supportive housing and housing run by Indwell, a partner charity.
The 18 hubs are an addition to nine existing locations across Ontario, which were former supervised consumption sites that transitioned into hubs after they were closed due to their proximity to schools and daycare centres. All of the hubs will be funded through $529 million from the province.
The provincial hubs will have services similar to those of the Youth Opportunities Unlimited hub and Atlohsa's hub at Parkwood Institute for Indigenous people.