B.C. to open new beds for Indigenous women with addiction, mental health needs

Jackie McKay · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 28, 2025 12:32 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 minutes ago

Ten caller beds volition beryllium disposable for Indigenous women successful Surrey, B.C., who are struggling with substance-use and intelligence wellness challenges. 

The B.C. Health minister, Aboriginal Housing Management Association (AHMA) and the Fraser Region Aboriginal Friendship Centre Association (FRAFCA), made the announcement Wednesday. 

The caller beds are portion of complex-care housing that volition enactment women with circumstantial needs and link them to services like mental wellness care, substance usage treatment and counselling. 

"We request to halt closing doors and uncovering a mode to unfastened them," said Kyla Painter, enforcement manager of FRAFCA. 

FRAFCA volition run the programme and measure the clients who volition unrecorded successful the 10-bedroom home. 

Painter said the location volition person 24-hour staffing so the women successful the programme would person entree to health care and harm simplification for substances anytime they need. 

"The 24/7 staffing, aesculapian enactment and superior attraction is simply a truly breathtaking and caller mode of addressing the stateless situation and supporting radical wherever they're at," said Painter. 

According to the 2023 homeless count for Metro Vancouver, 33 per cent of radical who experienced homelessness identified arsenic Indigenous. 

Of the Indigenous radical experiencing homelessness, 34 per cent were women, where 25 per cent of non-Indigenous radical experiencing homelessness were women. 

Culturally applicable care 

Painter said women are capable to enactment successful the programme arsenic agelong arsenic they want, and volition person entree to culturally applicable services. 

"We're offering an accidental to get retired and prosecute successful ceremonial and to recognize their identities and … to link to their taste roots," said Painter. 

Painter said they volition besides enactment household reunification, whether that is children oregon estranged household members. 

Indigenous-led and culturally comparative enactment is portion of the imaginativeness for Margaret Pfoh, main enforcement serviceman of AHMA. 

"Indigenous radical person many, galore existent and perceived barriers to capable wellness care, conscionable astatine a basal standard," said Pfoh. 

"Never caput adding successful the information that they mightiness beryllium dealing with addiction, oregon they mightiness beryllium dealing with encephalon traumas."

According to Statistics Canada data, more off-reserve First Nations women than men reported unmet wellness attraction needs successful the 12 months anterior to the survey. 

Pfoh said gathering a programme similar this has been a imagination for a agelong clip for her organization. 

"[It] gives a harmless spot for radical to rest, allows them to really instrumentality a fewer moments to instrumentality attraction of themselves earlier they tin code whether it's addictions, whether it's alcohol, whether it's encephalon injury, whether it's different compounding issues that are affecting their quality to support a unchangeable tenancy elsewhere," said Pfoh. 

B.C.'s Ministry of Health volition supply $1.8 cardinal annually to the AHMA and FRAFCA for operational costs of the complex-care lodging program, said Health Minister Josie Osborne. 

"Far excessively galore Indigenous peoples, peculiarly women, who are facing immoderate precise important barriers to unchangeable lodging and care, and this has led to a rhythm of shelters and exigency rooms," said Osborne.

The Ministry of Health budgeted $430 cardinal to grow complex-care lodging crossed the province. Osborne said different 20 complex-care beds volition beryllium opening successful Surrey. 

"What's unsocial astir this peculiar spot is that it's specifically for Indigenous women, and that it is Indigenous-led," said Osborne. 

The beds are expected to beryllium disposable successful mid-April.