For Sherri Johnstone, resident at the Rainier Women’s Treatment Centre in the Downtown Eastside, the last two weeks have brought on some tearful goodbyes. As Health Canada funding for the four-year pilot project ceased Dec. 1, Johnstone and the Rainier’s 37 current residents are adjusting to immediate cuts in staff and programming.
“It’s been hard,” says Johnstone, who struggled with crack addiction and failed at traditional treatment programs before she was referred to the Rainier in 2011. “We started to open up to these women and now they’re not here… Now we have to do that again with somebody else — it makes me feel like I’m almost back at day one again.”
Before December, Johnstone could gain the benefits of the Rainier’s full range of physical and spiritual recovery tools including meditation, yoga, vocational training and creative writing workshops led by Megaphone. These programs have been cut, though the Megaphone writing workshops will return thanks to private donations. The facility also had an in-house caseworker, counselor, full-time nurse and part-time doctor — all of which have moved off site.