Building momentum: Re-integration program for former inmates gets gov’t funding

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This article was published 23/11/2017 (2887 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Nothing Clint Sinclair ever tried to get off drugs and stay out of jail worked, until he was met at the gates of Headingley Correctional Institution by staff from the Momentum Centre.

“Addiction and alcoholism have plagued my family for generations,” Sinclair told a news conference at the centre on Selkirk Avenue Thursday. “When most of us are released from Headingley, we’re dropped off at Unicity Mall with a bus ticket and expected to become productive members of society.”

For the first time in his life, he knows real change for the better, Sinclair said.

Same with Justin Rivard.

Like his buddy Sinclair, he told Education and Training Minister Ian Wishart and Justice Minister Heather Stefanson that his life was a mess, a constant cycle of homelessness and addiction and incarceration.

“Momentum Centre helped me get a place to live. I am now taking classes at the University of Winnipeg,” Rivard said.

The five-year-old Momentum Centre has been so successful in re-integrating Indigenous men back into society, getting them treatment and preparing them for the workplace, the provincial government increased its funding Thursday as part of a $25-million announcement for 86 community-based employment and training services.

The Momentum Centre’s last funding agreement with the province was for one year at $283,000, but Thursday’s funding announcement gives it more stability with $900,000 for a 27-month period, co-executive director Dawn Rodgers told reporters.

The additional money will make significant improvements to housing costs and to workplace experience, she said.

“The success rate is phenomenally high,” Wishart said. “You have to invest in it, you have to be patient.”

There were 22 men in the Momentum Centre program in the last year, Rodgers said. Of those, 88 per cent have had multiple incarcerations, and recidivism can run 70 to 80 per cent, she added.

“We have it down to 15 per cent, which is just awesome.”

Co-executive director Kimber Corthey noted 73 per cent of participants had been in care with Child and Family Services, and 92 per cent had addiction personally or it ran in their families.

Getting into addiction treatment is one of the criteria for participating in the program. Some of the men even choose to remain in custody a few days longer while the Momentum Centre lines up treatment and Manitoba Housing for them, Corthey said.

In the decade from 2004 to 2014, corrections costs under the former NDP government soared from $78 million a year to $190 million, Stefanson said.

“Our government inherited some of the highest crime and incarceration rates in the country. It is clear the status quo is not an option,” she said.

“Responsible re-integration is about transitioning offenders back into the community. This program is making a real difference.”

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca