Siloam Mission is making a fundamental change to its client entry policy.
Winnipeg’s largest homeless shelter said Friday that sobriety is no longer a requirement for those seeking to access its services. It’s shifting to a behaviour-based policy — meaning if a person isn’t causing trouble, they’re welcome.
Siloam’s CEO Tessa Blaikie Whitecloud told 680 CJOB’s Connecting Winnipeg that the previous rules weren’t very effective anyway.
“All of the research shows that behaviour-based entry reduces violence, it increases people’s capacity to begin their recovery journey, and is important in so many other ways, so we want to always be taking the best approach possible to supporting people,” she said.
“It really means that no matter what state of sobriety someone’s in, so long as they come into the space to have their needs met and can be safe and be respectful to others in the space doing the same thing, they are welcome to access services here.”
The organization said it has been gradually moving toward this new policy over the past year, and is now fully committed to the behaviour-based model.
“We have folks that are using substances that are super friendly and kind and we have folks that are not using substances that are being aggressive,” said Blaikie Whitecloud.
“If your only rule is sobriety, you can’t actually maintain that safety and that respectful culture, so we’re moving to respect and safety as the cultural norm and focusing on meeting people’s needs better.”