The cheque to support two local programs aimed at helping those most in need in Simcoe County is all but in the mail, councillors heard Tuesday.
County of Simcoe councillors received a brief update during Tuesday's committee of the whole meeting on where things stand with the province regarding funding for both the Homelessness Addiction and Recovery Treatment (HART) Hub in Barrie, as well as with encampment response and shelter expansion initiatives.
The report was also a request to enter into some agreements in order to get the initiatives moving ahead, explained Mina Fayez-Bahgat, the county’s general manager of social and community services.
“A couple of weeks ago, we got the announcement on our successful HART Hub application, which was very good news for the county and for our homelessness system as a whole,” he said.
The next step is implementation, he added, which requires the county to begin putting together the various items it indicated it would do in the proposal.
The report, he noted, was asking for a few actions, including that it be received as information and to ask for the authority to enter into the necessary agreements to begin the implementation.
It also contained a request that would allow staff to dip into county reserves for bridge funding “in the event funding does not flow as soon as they’d like due to the election,” said Fayez-Bahgat.
The last request was not something that would ultimately be required, he added, telling council that by the time the report was completed, staff had heard from the province, which “provided clear instruction” on funding and therefore removed any potential “ambiguity.”
“In the last two weeks, we were unsure and we just wanted to be able to hit the ground running,” Fayez-Bahgat said.
Orillia Coun. Jay Fallis was curious if the initiative would include collaboration with local non-profits when it came time to begin implementing programming and services.
“There are a lot of different non-profits that help to create the current framework that we have in place and it would make sense to be working with them to develop this, and to ensure that what we are doing is collaborative with what they are doing,” he said.
Fallis also wondered who was responsible for running the hub, as well as how the county would ensure transparency in how the funding from the province is used.
“Is this something that will come back to council or is this now staff proceeding?” he asked.
Fayez-Bahgat explained services provided at the HART Hub will be delivered by various local service providers that are specific to health delivery for addiction recovery as well as both supportive and permanent housing support.
“The proposal was pulled together because it is an Ontario Health proposal focused on clinical recovery and treatment care first, then supportive housing, then permanent (housing),” he said. “(In) our role as the county, as a system service manager, we had the responsibility of facilitating the application and bringing together all those who had direct interest in serving in those communities.
“It’s a governance structure and those primary partners are the ones who developed the application and submitted it,” Fayez-Bahgat added. “Then there will be secondary partners that help with the overall referral into the different pathways of service. That is where I foresee our current shelter and homelessness system being connected and our current housing system being connected.”
When it comes to contracts, Fayez-Bahgat said it will be done in the same way all other contracts are handled by the county.
“We seek authority from council to enter into agreements, and those agreements are subject to different bylaws and procurement laws,” he said.
Funding for the HART Hub is “primarily 100 per cent flow-through,” he said, with the exception of some set-up costs.
“The county isn’t using the $6.3 million itself. It’s flowing right through to the service providers that are delivering the services similar to many of the things we do here at the county,” he said.
The county’s application for the HART Hub was officially announced Jan. 27 and brought the total number of approved sites to 27 — eight more than what was initially planned.
These hubs, according to government officials, are part of the province’s plan to “support safer communities” by putting $529 million into the sites across the Ontario while also banning injection sites from operating within 200 metres of schools and licensed child-care centres.
The government has said the 18 locations announced Jan. 27 were chosen as a result of a provincewide call for proposals last summer. The goal is to have them operational by April 1.
The location of the facility in Barrie, known as the HART of Simcoe, has yet to be released.
As previously reported, the HART Hub services could be offered at numerous locations.