Potential for federal overdose grants huge, says Regina non-profit

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Operations director Mike Gerrand says if the Street Culture Project’s pitch for a new grant from the City of Regina this month is successful, the plan is to buy another vehicle for the young people in their community outreach program.

It sounds boring, Gerrand acknowledges, using a grant to buy a car — but there’s real impact to such a simple opportunity, he promises.

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“(We want) to be able to give kids a safe ride home, be it to our shelter, a group home or just out of an unsafe situation,” he said. “This really helps us do that.”

Street Culture Project (SCP) is one of several non-profit organizations applying for a new grant that’s to be distributed by the city at the end of March. They’re each seeking a slice of $667,000 from the federal Emergency Treatment Fund, meant to help local non-profits respond to Canada’s opioid crisis.

The city is looking to hand out one-time grants to support the purchase of eight additional vehicles, safe supply materials, and outreach training for non-profits to fill employment positions. The goal is to help bolster local agencies’ capacity to provide harm reduction supports in Regina.

It’s exactly what was identified as a need when a roundtable of non-profits and other stakeholders spoke to city staff earlier this year to test the waters and gauge potential interest from Regina’s non-governmental agencies.

“In the non-profit world, it’s very difficult to sometimes come by capital expense money for things like a vehicle,” Gerrand said. “It’s not something that normally we have access to.”

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Street Culture has a few vehicles already, used by outreach staff at its 15-bed youth shelter and by workers in its mentorship, housing and addictions programs to get clients where they need to be.

Transportation is a significant barrier for anyone dealing with housing uncertainty, addictions, or violence at home — all things that might bring them to the door of a non-profit like Street Culture. It’s especially important for youths, given their age, said Gerrand.

Another set of wheels would be a pretty big addition to Street Culture’s resources, he said, one that goes a long way to better connecting the hundreds of young people in their programs to additional supports.

It could be the difference in someone getting a ride to the hospital/clinic, or to a detox/addictions treatment facility. Gerrand can name a whole list of additional destinations: a housing appointment, the Regina Food Bank, school or a job, court appointments, meeting with a social worker or family services, etc.

It can all add up to more than Street Culture’s staff is able to accommodate, he said.

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“(Another vehicle) would just give us more depth … more options,” Gerrand said. “Instead of having to pull from our already strained resources — saying ‘OK, which program doesn’t need a car right now?’ — we could take this one that was dedicated to stuff like that.”

Street Culture served more than 300 young people across its various programs in 2024, including housing more than 100 guests in its youth shelter. Staff had the capacity to provide more than 60 rides to appointments, two-thirds of which were health related and accompanied by a mental health and substance use consultant from the non-profit’s program.

The hope is to increase that capacity and cut away some of the stigma for clients, something Gerrand said isn’t always the first thing people imagine on the list of reasons a non-profit might need a car.

“We’ve got kids in our care going to high school and getting picked up from school,” he noted. “Would you want to walk out to a Toyota Sienna that looks like every other mom that’s picking them up? Or do you want to get into a van that looks like you’re going to a group home? There’s some real, positive effects on mental health when that kind of thing is considered.

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“And I think people deserve that level of feeling the same, feeling as good about themselves as anybody else.”

The ultimate goal for Street Culture would be to have a vehicle available on demand — an “SCP Uber,” Gerrand called it — to provide a safe ride option for youths in unsafe situations. The driver would be trained on violence de-escalation and the use of Naloxone to treat opioid overdoses.

However, that vision starts with being able to buy another vehicle.

Over a period of five weeks, we are chronicling our community’s place in the country, the promise of greater prosperity, and the blueprint to get there. See the “How Canada Wins” series intro here, followed by Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

lkurz@postmedia.com

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