News
Positive Changes for Addiction Services
Positive Changes to Addiction Services
Date: 2024-07-17
Thunder Bay, ON - St. Joseph's Care Group will soon make changes to better serve people in our community living with addictions. The medically-supported withdrawal management program currently operating as Balmoral Centre at 667 Sibley Drive will permanently relocate to 500 Oliver Road in fall 2024.
"Balmoral Centre has served our community for 35 years, but the withdrawal management program has really outgrown that site," said Andrea Docherty, Vice President Clinical & Community Health. "Our Oliver Road location is a large, accessible building where we will be able to deliver safer care with room to embed programming and spaces for healing and ceremony for Indigenous Peoples."
The Oliver Road location will sound familiar. That's because it is home to Crossroads Centre, a recovery centre offering pre- and post-treatment services for people over the age of 18. The two programs - withdrawal management and Crossroads Centre - will temporarily operate under one roof at Oliver Road. During that time, the Sibley Drive location will be renovated and in summer 2025, it will become the new home of Crossroads Centre.
"To put it simply, we are swapping sites to better serve people now and into the future," said Janine Black, President & CEO of St. Joseph's Care Group. "Withdrawal management and Crossroads Centre play an important role in the continuum of care that St. Joseph's Care Group offers, and we have worked hard to ensure there will be no disruption to the services provided by either program as they move to their new permanent location. The new spaces will allow us to improve quality of care in our current programs and also provide space for potential expansions in the future."
For more information, please contact:
St. Joseph's Care Group
Communications & Government Relations
Media Line: 807-768-4455 | Email: sjcg@tbh.net
Positive Changes for Addiction Services
Backgrounder
Balmoral Centre - 667 Sibley Drive, Thunder Bay
St. Joseph's Care Group's Balmoral Centre opened in 1989 as a 20-bed voluntary non-medical withdrawal management program.
In 2013, additional funding enabled the provision of medically-supervised withdrawal management and stabilization to reduce addiction-related visits to the emergency department (ED) including a bypass protocol allowing EMS to bring clients directly to Balmoral Centre.
Today, Balmoral Centre is operating a total of 25 beds including two temporary beds in an effort to meet local demand for withdrawal management. To serve more people, complimentary services like the Rapid Access Addictions Medicine (RAAM) Clinic were temporarily relocated.
Crossroads Centre - 500 Oliver Road, Thunder Bay
Crossroads Centre (Crossroads), which voluntarily integrated with St. Joseph's Care Group in April 2024, has been in operation since 1965.
Crossroads provides pre- and post-treatment for people living with addictions. Housed in a former elementary school on Oliver Road, it is in a much larger space than is needed, with parts of the building unused.
What Will Change
Withdrawal Management will move from its Sibley Drive location to Oliver Road. They will be temporarily co-located with Crossroads Centre programming.
Sibley Drive will undergo substantial renovations, and in summer of 2025, Crossroads Centre programming will move to that site.
Why Change?
Balmoral Centre is operating above capacity. All space within this building has been fully utilized, and it was not originally designed for withdrawal management. Anyone entering the building - clients, staff, police and EMS - must navigate stairs up or down, or be able to fit within a small lift.
The Oliver Road location is a much larger space than is needed to deliver pre- and post-treatment for addictions, and it has become evident that the Sibley Drive location is not big enough to deliver withdrawal management.
Renovations at both sites will be designed with the input of staff, clients and partners to create purpose-built spaces that are accessible and uphold dignity through appropriate spaces including gender-appropriate washrooms.
This move will mean safer care in an environment more suited to the clients served, better access to and space to offer a continuum of services in mental health and addictions, and the room to embed programming and spaces for healing and ceremony for Indigenous Peoples.
About St. Joseph's Care Group
St. Joseph's Care Group (SJCG) combines tradition and innovation in providing a broad range of services and regional leadership in Mental Health & Addictions, Rehabilitative Care, and Seniors' Health. Our approach is wholistic people-centred care, meeting the people of Northwestern Ontario where they are on their wellness journey and supporting them to achieve their highest quality of life.
Traditional healing, counselling services, and cultural supports are available to all clients from N'doo'owe Binesi's Indigenous Health Team.
