‘We knew it was working’: After facing uncertainty over its future, a locally designed day treatment program at Sault Area Hospital has evolved into a critical tool in combating our city’s opioid crisis
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part of an ongoing SooToday series — ‘Turning the Tide’ — that explores potential solutions to our city’s toxic drug crisis. You can read more about our project HERE.
Once at risk of closure, a vital addiction treatment program in Sault Ste. Marie is saving and transforming lives.
While funding is currently secure, there was a time when the future was in doubt for the addiction treatment program offered by Sault Area Hospital.
The six-week program’s purpose and the fight for its return demonstrate its importance to the community — and a model for others to follow.
SAH’s Concurrent Disorders Day Treatment program, better known as A New Day, currently operates out of the Northway Wellness Centre, which is home to the hospital’s withdrawal management program.
Since it began in 2020, more than 200 people have graduated from the program.
For graduate Amy Lebreton, A New Day isn’t just the name of the program — it’s exactly what she says she’s been given.
“It took me a couple of tries at recovery to actually solidify that this is what I wanted out of my life. I had lived that lifestyle for so long, it’s hard to just change,” said Lebreton.
Celebrating four-and-a-half years of sobriety since graduating the local program in 2021, Lebreton is currently on maternity leave from her workplace after giving birth earlier this year.
“My life has definitely changed for the better,” she said.
Lebreton attended A New Day before the program moved into its current home at the Northway Wellness Centre, which was constructed in the former Sault Star building on Old Garden River Road.
“I went to Elliot Lake detox first and applied to as many treatment centres as I could, but because it was the pandemic, all the wait times were about a year long,” she said.
Although it was being offered in her hometown, Lebreton hadn’t heard about A New Day when it was suggested to her.
“I was able to get in there pretty quickly and I’m definitely grateful that’s the route I ended up taking,” she said.
“Addiction is a disease and it is a matter of life and death. If I would have come home and just been stuck on a wait list for a year, I don’t know if I would be where I am today. So I’m definitely grateful that I was able to go there.”
A New Day is available to those who are living with substance use, gambling, gaming or technology use issues and have a co-existing mental illness.
The program supports 12 people at a time, bringing them together in a group setting at the Northway Wellness Centre during the day, allowing them to return to wherever they call home in the evening.
Terri Nicholson, a registered psychotherapist and concurrent disorders counsellor for the program, said the concept of day treatment wasn’t conceived in the Sault, but SAH developed its own program based on the needs of the community.
The early successes of the program led to hospitals and agencies in other municipalities to contact SAH about how to develop their own version.
Nicholson said the program takes a community-forward approach.
“Not only do we do the cognitive behavioural therapy, the dialectical behavioural therapy, the mindfulness and the Grandfather Teachings, but we also offer communication and teachings from all the other programs in town,” she said.
A typical day in the program begins with breakfast at 9:30 a.m. From there, clients attend a number of therapy sessions, exercise and sessions with community partners throughout the day.
“Then by 3 o’clock they’re back home, practicing all the skills they learned all day and then they’re back at it the next day,” Nicholson said.
Lebreton said the daytime hours of the program were beneficial to her.
“I was up there during the day, but I was able to come home at night and it wasn’t like ending that program and you’re done,” she said. “I still knew I could access the outpatient mental health and still had counselling up there.”
Nicholson said the program operates using a harm reduction model.
“There’s two camps: there’s abstinence and harm reduction. Abstinence treatment centres expect full abstinence, with no substance use. If there is substance use during the program, they’re asked to return to their home community. The goal is long-term no substances,” explained Nicholson.
“With harm reduction, we’re looking at meeting the client exactly where they’re at. We treat the entire client, not just parts of the client, and reduce all the harm in their lives so they can consider a life worth living, that is joyous and purposeful and rewarding.”
Exterior of the Northway Wellness Centre at its official opening, Sept. 21, 2023. Darren Taylor/SooToday
If a patient uses a substance during treatment under A New Day, it is referred to as a slip, not a relapse — and treatment continues.
“We encourage them to come back and sit in the chair the next day so we can process the slip, figure out what needs to be tweaked in the treatment plan, and how to better meet their needs,” Nicholason said.
“We don’t look at it as a failure of the individual, we look at it as a failure of the entire system.”
Lebreton said she appreciated the harm-reduction approach that the program operates under.
“People weren’t discharged from the day treatment because they had a slip during the night. In the group that I was in, people would come in the next day and say: ‘I messed up. I didn’t follow through with my safety plan,'” she said.
“We would not only work through it as a group and bring up the triggers that led up to that, and then work on it on a one-on-one basis with counsellors.”
Nicholson said some similar programs across the province were temporarily closed during COVID-19, but she fought to keep the Sault program operating as an essential service.
“We stood firmly by the fact that we weren’t going to go virtual,” she said. “We wanted to be able to see the people, offer them a safe place and recognize that addictions and then health treatment is vital.”
Since graduating, Lebreton has given back as a peer support worker in Sault Ste. Marie, assisting people who are living with their own addiction struggles.
Lebreton said she touts the program at every opportunity when dealing with people who are living in active addiction.
“With people who haven’t reached recovery, you can kind of see that little spark ignited back in them,” she said. “It’s all about planting the seed, but everybody’s journey is definitely different.”
Lebreton said her job as a peer support worker allows her to meet people where they are and treat them with dignity.
“As long as somebody can look themselves in the mirror and stand who they see looking back at them, then that’s a positive in my eyes,” she said.
A New Day began as a pilot project in November of 2020 and ran until August of 2022. By that time, it had treated 110 individuals and of its graduates, 40 per cent found employment or returned to work.
Despite its success, funding for the program was not renewed in 2022, leading to the doors being shuttered while the SAH and community leaders appealed for the return of funding.
After a brief return, it closed again in 2023 when temporary provincial funding was in doubt. Nicholson said those times of uncertainty were difficult.
“I have invested my entire career and a whole lot of my soul into this work,” she said. “I was gutted and let down and it was really hard to not be worried for the clients that I’d already been working with and the ones that were on the waiting list at the time. I think it affected all of us as far as just an anxiety for the community because we knew it was working and we were afraid to let it go.”
After multiple starts and stops, the province funded a limited return of the program in January of 2024 and SAH later decided to continue offering the program beyond March 31, 2024.
Nicholson said it was a community effort that eventually led to the program attaining permanent funding.
“Last year, the hospital committed to funding the program from base funding — kind of taking the risk on us getting permanent funding. It was great, we had a lot of graduates. Then this year, the province offered permanent funding,” she said.
Nicholson said she doesn’t take for granted the amount of work that went into bringing the program back from the brink.
“I recognize that a lot of people worked really hard and that I’m just the lucky one that gets to work within this program,” she said.
More information about the hospital’s day treatment program can be found HERE.
