A raft of targeted services is coming to the Sunshine Coast this spring for approximately 25 people afflicted with overlapping medical needs who rely on supportive housing or who aren’t securely housed.
The program, described as “complex-care housing,” will be delivered by Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) and will target people with challenges related to drug use and mental health and who are either renters, are precariously housed, or who live in supportive housing.
In a Nov. 25 release, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Sheila Malcomson described the service as “groundbreaking.”
“These specialized services on the Sunshine Coast will connect people with the supports they need to establish stability and break the cycle of homelessness,” she said.
Voluntary services will be provided by a small team of staff with the capacity to treat approximately 25 people. People will also have access to emergency rental subsidies through the program.
Sechelt Hospital psychiatrist Dr. Marius Welgemoed told Coast Reporter the team has a “good understanding” of who will be served with the initiative.
“These are clients with complex healthcare needs,” he said. “Oftentimes these patients also have a history of significant trauma in their past and there’s also part of this population presenting with traumatic brain injury” – often as a result of multiple poisonings from illicit drugs or overdoses.
VCH will hire more than five people to provide the services, according to Monika Stein, manager for the complex-care housing support program. She was hired mid-September.
Those hires include a primary care nurse, a nurse practitioner and a nursing clinical coordinator to oversee the complex-care group and who will provide nurse prescribing oversight. The complex-care support team will be “glued to and in concert with” other teams already operating, said Stein.
Stein said it’s not a “hard stop” at 25 people, rather, that’s the anticipated number the increased staff will have the capacity to support through this intensive case management approach. “We have the room to flex. It may be a few more than 25 people, it may be less from time to time, based on their individual needs.”
VCH is coordinating the services with shíshálh Nation, BC Housing and RainCity Housing, which provides homelessness services and operates supportive housing complexes in Sechelt and Gibsons.
“Some of our clients face significant barriers, not only in retaining their accommodation, but in accessing our health services,” said Marie Duperreault, VCH’s operations director for the Sunshine Coast.
“This dedicated team will deliver services 'in situ' where people are living to improve both their health-care outcomes and reduce their risk of homelessness.”
The services are voluntary and “person-centered,” said the release. Staff will visit people in their homes “helping them to stabilize and achieve their goals,” by providing services such as access to addictions medicine, overdose prevention, nursing and other primary care services, as well as social work, home support and community care.
Housing providers will also be able to identify people struggling and request staff to intervene.
Powell River-Sunshine Coast MLA Nicholas Simons told Coast Reporter the program is “filling gaps that prevent gaps from getting worse” and offers “enhanced care for people with enhanced needs.”
Services are intended to be flexible to meet the needs of people who “just need that extra assistance in ensuring they aren’t disruptive to the entire system. That they aren’t causing extra problems for the community,” he said.
Simons said he is excited about the program because it addresses challenges associated with supportive housing complexes. “There can be a certain minority of individuals that cause increased challenges to others to live safely,” he said.
Programming will also ensure Indigenous people receive access to traditional supports and Elders.
Duppereault said they are working “very very closely” with the shíshálh Nation.
Funding for the program was secured through a $164 million envelope in the 2022 provincial budget to provide 500 people with complex-care housing supports over three years in B.C.
Due to ongoing staffing and housing challenges, the service is expected to start in the spring. There is no end date attached to the service.
The province launched the program in January. To date, 380 people have received supports through the program in rural and urban communities, including Vancouver and Victoria, Bella Coola, Northern Health region, Kelowna, Nanaimo, Powell River and the Sunshine Coast.
As for why the Sunshine Coast is among the communities benefiting from the initiative, Duperreault told Coast Reporter, “as with many rural communities, our human resources are very thin. At times we don’t necessarily have the additional support of community resources that may exist in larger communities.”
“The need is here,” she said.
