Sault residential withdrawal management facility gets a name, on track for summer opening

Sault withdrawal management facility gets a name Sault Ste. Marie's new residential withdrawal management facility will be called Northway Wellness Centre & is expected to open this summer.

Sault Ste. Marie's new residential withdrawal management & safe beds facility now has a name. It will be called Northway Wellness Centre, and officials at Sault Area Hospital (SAH) say construction is on track for a summer opening.

"We are expecting late summer," said Lisa Case, Clinical Director of the Mental Health & Addictions Program at SAF.

"We are waiting on two really important pieces of equipment, including our air handling equipment and our generator."

Case said once the facility is completed, patients will have access to a variety of services from healthcare professionals such as nurses, addictions services workers, social workers and physicians.

"If they're acutely intoxicated or in acute withdrawal, we'll be able to support them both psychosocially with what supports they need, as well as with medication support, symptom management, things that would historically bring them to the emergency department or to continue using," Case said.

Sault Ste. Marie MPP Ross Romano said the withdrawal management site and the live-in youth treatment program unveiled earlier in the week are the results of consistent lobbying for addiction support services.

"It's important that we make sure that everyone who is dealing through trauma, dealing through a crisis, is having a problem with mental health and addiction knows that there is help out there for them,” said Romano.

“There is help in their community and we need to steer them towards that help on their path to wellness."

Meantime, Save Our Young Adults (SOYA)’s founder Connie Raynor-Elliott said while the addiction and mental health crisis still grips the city, she's confident the situation will improve with these new supports in place.

"Once the ribbons are cut, you'll see the progress," said Raynor-Elliott.

"Things are happening and I'm really impressed."