An opening date has finally been set for Carepoint, London, Ont.’s first permanent consumption and treatment site.
The site will provide people with a space to use drugs safely and seek services for recovery.
A temporary version of Carepoint, previously named the Temporary Overdose Prevention Site, opened at 186 King St. in 2018 before moving to 446 York St. last year, where the permanent site will also reside.
To date, the temporary version of Carepoint has reversed more than 715 overdoses, according to the Regional HIV/AIDS Connection (RHAC), the organization tasked with leading the program.
On Thursday, officials shared that construction is near completion at 446 York St., with Carepoint set to open permanently during the week of Feb. 27.
“We went through a lot of hoops to get to this stage and we’ve been watching the renovations since last June come together with great anticipation,” said RHAC executive director Brian Lester.
Lester says transitioning to the permanent site will provide a better experience for both clients and staff.
This includes the addition of a clinic space to create capacity for health-care supports within the facility. The new building will have space for other service providers to supply wraparound supports as well. These supports include referrals to other services such as housing, drug treatment, mental health services, primary care and income support.
The Counterpoint Needle and Syringe program, which allows folks to drop off used needles and syringes in exchange for clean ones at no cost, will also be reintegrated into Carepoint once the permanent site opens.
As for the continued funding of the site, Lester says Carepoint is covered by the province, which already approved up to $1.795 million in capital funding for the program.
“The Ministry of Health has provided us (with) annualized funding, which is termed evergreen, so it’s ongoing funding and I believe that the Carepoint is quite well-resourced to continue to respond to the needs.”
The London InterCommunity Health Centre (LIHC) is a partner in Carepoint and will play a role in delivering wraparound services to clients.
“So we’ll be bringing nursing and medical care to the site to help people who are there and maybe need a little medical assistance, and also working with the team at Regional HIV/AIDS Connection in the medical side of delivery of services,” said LIHC executive director Scott Courtice.
“We do have many shared clients, so it’s a chance for us to engage with people in a different space outside of a traditional clinical setting and meet their needs a little bit differently.”
Dr. Alex Summers, medical officer of health for the Middlesex-London Health Unit (MLHU), says Carepoint plays a critical role in the community’s response to opioids and other substances, and mitigating the harms that come with them.
“It’s really important to recognize that substances continue to have a significant and negative impact in not only our community, but across the province, and that it is really going to be a number of organizations working together to try and mitigate those harms here at home,” Summers said.
The MLHU was essential to getting Carepoint off the ground and was responsible for striking a deal in 2018 that allowed it to be built on 446 York St.
“Now that the site is up and running, it really is under the capable hands of our partners at the Regional HIV/AIDS Connection. We’ll be continuing to support them in whatever way they wish,” Summers said.
In 2019, the MLHU published an evaluation of the temporary version of Carepoint, a copy of which can be found on the health unit’s Carepoint webpage.
Summers says the MLHU will continue to assess the program moving forward.
“One of our critical roles is to look at the rate of illness in our community and that includes the use of substances and the harms associated with substance use, so we’ll continue to monitor that to understand not only if (Carepoint) is having the impact that we want, but whether or not we actually need more of these facilities in our region,” Summers added.
As for the future of Carepoint, Lester says the goal is the build up the wraparound supports provided and expand the program’s reach.
“It will really be about how many people are we serving, how many referrals are we making, how many overdoses are we reversing,” Lester said. “All those pieces are different metrics we’ll be looking at to help define the success of the program.”
More details will be unveiled next week when media are offered a tour of the permanent Carepoint site.
In the meantime, folks can access care from the temporary site at 446 York St. seven days a week from 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.