Women to get own place to recover from addictions
By: Aldo Santin – Winnipeg Free Press
A former personal care home in St. Boniface is being converted into an addiction's recovery centre for women and their children.

Executive director Gregory Stetski, right, and program manager Adele Plett Bartel show off a lounge at women’s addiction recovery centre being set up in former personal care home.

The Union Gospel Mission is renovating the 60-suite structure on Archibald Street, providing a facility that it believes is sorely lacking in Winnipeg.

"The need for a facility like this is so great," Greg Stetski, executive director of Union Gospel Mission, said. "There are more places for men but places for women are a little tougher to find."

The Union Gospel Mission, which has been active in Winnipeg's inner city, has operated a men's addiction recovery centre for years and has been trying to establish a similar facility for 20 years. Stetski said in the past, every time the UGM found a place, opposition from neighbours killed the project.

Stetski said the Archibald location is ideal because the building is surrounded by a cemetery within an industrial neighbourhood and there are no neighbours to complain.

Stetski said the special aspect of the new facility is that it can accommodate women's children. He said only the Behavioural Health Foundation in St. Norbert operates a similar facility for women and their children. "Recovery works best when we can work with the women's children," Stetski said.

Adele Plett Bartel, manager of the new addiction recovery program, said women are reluctant to sign up for a recovery program if it means abandoning their children.

Plett Bartel said the program is not a detox facility, adding the women must be clean for 10 days and pass through a screening.

The recovery program is based on a similar program offered by a Union Gospel Mission in Des Moines, Iowa. The women attend classes during the day and the evenings consist of crafts and other activities.

"One of the main differences between our program and others is that ours is a year-long," Plett Bartel said. "We recognize that it takes a long time to change bad habits. We're offering them a safe place for them and their children."

The UGM took over the two-storey building in October. There are 30 suites on each floor and two suites share a bathroom. There are shower facilities on each floor and the building has dining and kitchen facilities.

Fifteen rooms have been renovated so far. The UGM has launched an adopt-a-room renovations fundraiser, with $3,000 covering the costs of renovating one room. The UGM expects to have 30 rooms renovated and filled by the April, when the centre has its official opening. It hopes to have the remaining 30 rooms completed and filled a year later.

Stetski said the centre has an annual operating budget of $500,000. While it's leasing the property now, Stetski said ideally the UGM would prefer to own but it lacks money to pay the $850,000 purchase price.

There will be a limit on the number of women with children who will be admitted into the program and only a maximum of three children, up to the age of 12, will be accepted.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca