BC Addiction Ministry Giving Grants to Religious 12-Step Treatment Centres

One of Sheila Malcolmson’s first announcements as the new Minister of Mental Health & Addictions was the awarding of grants to 14 organizations to establish 100 more publicly funded addiction treatment & recovery beds in British Columbia.

In the absence of the overarching provincial regulation of addiction treatment and recovery facilities that the BC Coroner recommended the Ministry develop by Sept. 2019, the Ministry could have at least taken this opportunity to attach conditions to the grants, requiring the 14 organizations to meet strict standards. The Ministry failed to do so.

According to a Ministry spokesperson, the types of programming and services that the grant recipients offer vary, and “organizations with mandatory 12-step components were eligible for funding.”

The 12-step model is an unproven peer support program rooted in religion. The BC Humanist Association has repeatedly told the government that they have an obligation of religious neutrality and should not fund facilities with mandatory 12-step programming.

However, the government awarded grants to the Penticton Recovery Resource Society, Turning Points Collaborative Society, Edgewood Treatment Centre, Realistic Recovery Society, Salvation Army Harbour Light, and Westminster House, all of whom advertise their programs as being based on the 12-step model. The Salvation Army, the organization that is getting the most funding (15–20 beds) is a Christian program.

The Ministry does not require the grant recipients to continue to provide care to a client if they relapse into problematic substance use. This is perplexing because the very reason a person goes to an addiction facility, is to get help with problematic substance use.

Instead the Ministry said that the organizations were reviewed for their “community transition planning to support clients for planned and unplanned program departures.”

According to the Ministry, the organizations that received funding “must accommodate clients on Opioid Agonist Therapy (OAT).” This is a step up from many facilities in BC that prohibit all forms of OAT. However the Ministry declined to answer whether the organizations are required to offer a full range of OAT medications.

Many addiction facilities in BC only allow Suboxone and prohibit all other forms of OAT. I am unaware of a single residential addiction facility in BC that accepts clients who are prescribed Hydromorphone, M-Eslon or injectable OAT.

This is despite the Ministry of Health’s position statement that detoxing from opioids without initiating an individualized OAT medication puts a person at a huge risk of having a fatal overdose.

The Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions declined to answer whether the organizations that were awarded grants are required to offer medications for the treatment of stimulant use disorder, benzodiazepine dependency or alcohol use disorder.

The Ministry said that “if the organizations requested it, they were provided with information about how to adapt to support clients who want to use medication assisted recovery”.

One of the organizations that was awarded a grant, 333 Recovery Homes, states on their website that they are a total abstinence, 12-step recovery program and a person must be “disease free” in order to attend their program.

The requirement of being disease free in order to access addiction services is, on its face, a violation of the BC Human Rights Code. If the government can’t even screen organizations for their compliance to human rights legislation, it is wishful thinking to expect them to require organizations to provide individualized, client centred and science based care.

In the absence of the overarching regulation of addiction facilities that the Ministry has failed to develop, this was at least an opportunity for them to set high standards for the 14 grant recipients, and signal to other organizations that want government funding, that they too must meet those standards.

Unfortunately the Ministry has failed to significantly raise the bar for the standard of care at addiction facilities in BC. Providing individualized, client centred and science based care that does not involve religious coercion (the minimum standard in all other areas of healthcare), is not a requirement for addiction service providers.

The Ministry did not indicate that they have any plans to develop the provincial regulation of addiction treatment and recovery facilities that the BC Coroner has recommended.

List of grant recipients: https://tinyurl.com/17lzjzon

Additional grant recipient: https://tinyurl.com/3qawm64e

Ministry press release Feb 9, 2021: https://tinyurl.com/5dedvzga

Grant application guidelines: https://tinyurl.com/2su937cs

CBC Bethany Lindsay, “As overdose deaths spike, families ask why B.C. has failed to fully regulate addiction treatment”: https://tinyurl.com/bxyrjx3m

Crackdown Podcast- episode 13: one woman’s journey through four recovery homes- a bureaucratic, broken patchwork of a system: https://tinyurl.com/5yv628fv