Addiction recovery home for new moms first of its kind on Vancouver Island

Come summer’s end, six new moms and their babies will be healing from addiction together in a Greater Victoria home.

The Union Gospel Mission (UGM) is opening Arrow Home, Vancouver Island’s first-ever recovery centre for women with infants.

“Vancouver Island hasn’t always had a ton of long-term, live-in recovery options for women,” said UGM spokesperson Nicole Mucci.

Six women and their babies will live in the home for a year at a time, with 24/7 support from counsellors and case workers.

“When women are experiencing addiction, their ability to seek help — particularly if they have kids — might be a very fraught journey because there is still a lot of stigma; there is still a lot of judgement and there is also fear,” Mucci said.

Men typically make up the majority of people recorded in point-in-time counts, which estimate the number of people experiencing homelessness and addiction in a community, Mucci said. That doesn’t mean women aren’t struggling.

“In order to seek safety or in order to seek shelter, maybe you stay in an abusive relationship. If you have kids, maybe you’re couch surfing with friends and family,” Mucci said.

“When you can’t see it, it’s not always as easy to make the help available.”

Hannah Ferguson, 32, had to move to a different land mass to get help.

“On the island, there’s just not a lot of recovery options for women,” she said. “I decided to move to Vancouver because I thought that was going to give me the best option at recovery.”

She moved there in 2022 and went to a UGM recovery centre dedicated to women.

“I have Crohn's disease, so I had a really traumatic surgery when I was 18 and got addicted to painkillers,” Ferguson said.

“The longer that I’ve stayed clean, the better and more amazing my life has become.”

Ferguson is hopeful the new recovery centre will give other women a shot at a happy ending.

“I’m here today to prove that recovery is possible, that it does happen,” she said. “This new house will be an amazing spot for women to come and recover.”

UGM was able to purchase the home thanks to a $2 million donation. It will take $1.6 million annually to operate the program.

In addition to Arrow Home, women will be able to get help at New Roads Therapeutic Recovery Community in View Royal later this year, when it opens 20 treatment beds for women.