Women’s & Children Addiction Treatment in Calgary, Alberta

This woman, Erica*, emailed us looking for a First Nations treatment program. We weren’t sure if she was searching for treatment for herself only or one that included services for her kids. We never heard back from Erica but sent her an email with the following information that would hopefully be of help if she’s still seeking treatment.

Erica expressed interest in the Lander Treatment program. However, if she wished to bring her child(ren) to treatment, this program is not a good fit.

There is a long-term treatment program called Youville Residence that is 150 days in length and has a house for women with children. This program also works with Alberta Works to help secure funding.

Youville Women’s Residence
3210 – 29th Street SW Calgary, AB T3E 2L1
Phone: (403) 242-0244 Intake Phone: (403) 984-2707
Fax: (403) 242-3915 E-mail: intake@youville.net Website: www.youville.net

There are more family programs in Canada. Most of them are First Nations programs as well, which might help Erica secure funding for one of them.

Here is a link to all the NNADAP options, which includes federal-funded Fist programs. You will need to find the one that meets your needs as well as your family’s.

Just in case you feel like you can find the right program through the NNADAP link, we recommend you ask these questions that might help you figure out how to get into treatment sooner rather than later.

When a program tells you about wait times there are two types of waitlists:

1. Some programs have fixed intake takes for fixed programs lengths.

2. If the program does not give fixed intake dates, then the waitlist timeframe they give is based on: (1) how long the treatment program is and (2) how many people are already on the waitlist. Most waitlists are based on the assumption that all admitted clients will successfully complete treatment. In other words, a 4-month waitlist could be less that a couple months because people drop off the list (e.g. don’t go or attend another program) or leave treatment early.

Once you have answers to the first set of questions, there are typically two options from this point: (1) The program isn’t a good fit (e.g. waitlist is too long, doesn’t provide services you need, etc), so you start calling the next program. (2) You like this program and you start asking them this next set of questions.