At the Nov. 17 Kamloops city council meeting, Acting Social and Community Development Supervisor Ty Helgason said VisionQuest had been dropping off clients into downtown Kamloops when they ask to be discharged. “There was a bus dropping people off in Kamloops into homelessness.”

The Executive Director of VisionQuest Megan Worley says that is not at all true. “We don’t own a bus and the last two clients dropped off at the shelter were done four months ago. We do everything that we can, everything in our power to prevent taking clients to the shelter. It is a last resort.”

In an interview on NL Newsday, Helgason wanted to clarify that the point around VisionQuest was about 30 seconds of a 35 minute presentation. “There was not a lot of context granted and I really didn’t cover the full story, it was just mentioned in passing as one of the challenges and contributors to homelessness in Kamloops.”

Helgason says that he often receives allegations against social service providers which are quite often un-factual, but they are always taken seriously and looked into.

“One of the ones that we hear most frequently is that ASK Wellness or CMHA or somebody brings bus loads of people into Kamloops to use social housing or that other communities send us bus loads of people. Neither of those statements is even remotely factual or has ever been proven in any way.” He says there was one instance though, where the hired security along West Victoria Street told officilals that there was a van that had dropped some people off in front of Emerald Centre. “So we started looking into where this van had come from. CMHA, who operates Emerald Centre wasn’t aware of it, we weren’t aware of it, bylaw wasn’t aware of it, RCMP wasn’t aware of it. So we had to look into it and eventually we found that the van was from VisionQuest.”

“So in terms of whether it was once or whether it’s a chronic issue I can’t speak to that” said Helgeson. “I am not sure how frequently it has happened or if it was a one time instance, but in follow up to that finding, myself and other members of the city’s administration team, two members of council and (Supt.) Syd Lecky from RCMP went to VisionQuest and toured their facility.”

“We have an appreciation for what they do there. They do provincial intake, recovery and then when clients want to discharge, they have a mandate to ensure that they go somewhere that they have a safe place to stay.”

“Where the gap in the system is is if they can’t transport them back to their home community or an alternative safe place to stay, their mandate dictates that they have to go the closest place with a shelter. So for VisionQuest, being a few kilometres outside Logan Lake, that means Kamloops. So it certainly wouldn’t be a frequent occurrence, but in last resort situations they do have to bring people here.” Helgason says it then asked VisionQuest to only do this when absolutely necessary and when it does to communicate with CMHA and Emerald Centre so that they know how many people are coming and some of characteristics of the individuals, so that it doesn’t have unintended consequences for Kamloops.

What is VisionQuest? 

VisionQuest is an abstinence-based rehab centre in Logan Lake that is equipped with 60 beds, some 80 acres of land complete with recreation facilities including a gymnasium, work-out room, baseball field and tennis courts. For male clients entering the program, it is a beginning point for the first 6- 9 months of their journey at VisionQuest.

It has a success rate of 25-30%. Worley says that figure is based on the number of clients that complete the program. “The question is what is considered success? Is success that they’ve completed the program? Is success that they’ve completed the program and stayed clean for a year? Is success that they’ve stayed clean for the rest of their lives? Everybody’s determination of success is quite a bit different. So it’s hard to put a statistic on it.”

Worley notes that success at its women’s house, which is located in Surrey, is 75%.

“It really is hard to gauge success” says Worley. “I think the only way we’re only going to be able to gauge it is when we actually look out our windows on the streets, do we have fewer people on the streets than we did yesterday? If the answer is yes then we’re seeing success.”

What is the discharge process?

There are a number of different processes that take place depending on the reason for the clients discharge. “The first example would be if a client actually finished the program and was ready to move on, those clients are welcome to stay with us as long as they need to. We do have a second stage house in Abbotsford that they can attend. They can go there get a job, go to school. Do whatever they need to rejoin society, or they can simply stay at our Logan Lake location” says Worley. “We have had a couple of clients that have stayed there upwards of two years. We’d never evict a client just because they finished the program. They can stay until they feel safe to leave.”

What if a client broke the law or broke the rules of the facility? Worley says if a client breaks the law, the RCMP are called in right away and they are arrested. If they break the rules repeatedly then we would begin the eviction process and there are a few options. “The first would be having them go to a different recovery facility. If they’re not interested in that and they simply want to leave we will attempt to get them back to their community. If we can’t get them back to their community we will have to take them to a shelter and that is a last resort. We do this so that they don’t just walk away especially in the middle of nowhere where we are located and in the middle of winter when they can freeze to death. We’re a 40 minute drive from anywhere…. we’re mandated to take them somewhere safe so that they have less of a chance of overdosing and they have an opportunity to at least seek some kind of amenity or service that will help them on their way.”

If they’re mandated to be with VisionQuest due to coming from the correction system, then it is reported to the RCMP and their probation officer that they have breached their condition and they’re supposed to be picked up and put back into custody within 24 hours of leaving the facility.

What is the value of VisionQuest?

According to its website the RCMP have reported that each active addict creates about $350,000 in property crime on an yearly basis. Meanwhile, the government pays $960 per month for each client receiving welfare assistance, for an annual savings of $44,200 in services and erasing the property crime impact of an individual’s addiction. In other words, for each day a client is with VisionQuest, the government is saving $121.10 in services, and having a measurable impact on crime.