One-of-a-kind home offers help to moms with HIV
Pregnant women, new moms with HIV, addictions issues can stay at Sanctum 1.5
A first-of-its-kind home that will provide shelter and support to pregnant women and new mothers suffering from substance abuse issues and HIV will welcome its first residents next week.
The 10 rooms in Sanctum 1.5, a supportive housing facility in Saskatoon’s Pleasant Hill neighbourhood, are ready and waiting. Soft robes and fuzzy slippers lay draped over the single beds. Big-eyed plush animals lay waiting in cribs.
Katelyn Roberts, executive director of the non-profit Sanctum Care Group that will manage Sanctum 1.5, said the organization has accepted two pregnant women to move into the home on Oct. 1.
More are sure to follow. Roberts said Sanctum needs to process the many referrals it has received from the Saskatchewan Health Authority, the Ministry of Social Services, the Saskatchewan Child Protection Office, the Westside Community Clinic and Saskatoon’s three hospitals.
She said there is no timeline for the organization to fill all its beds.
“There will be lots of referrals and we’ll need to triage accordingly.”
Roberts spoke with reporters Monday at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for Sanctum 1.5. Media and community members were invited to tour the 10-room bungalow in the 100 block of Avenue O South, which features a large children’s play area and communal kitchen in the basement.
The home promises to provide support to pregnant women and new mothers who are living with HIV, at risk of HIV and/or have substance abuse problems. It will provide prenatal care, opioid substitution therapy, parenting classes, social supports and assistance with connecting women to health and addictions services. The goal is to prevent the transmission of HIV from women to their children and to keep women and their babies together.
Women are able to stay at Sanctum 1.5 for the duration of their pregnancies and can stay with their babies for up to three months after they give birth. After that, they can access services for up to a year across the street at Sanctum, an HIV hospice and transitional care home.
“It’s really an individualized approach to care so there’s no kind of black-and-white rules in terms of when and how we intervene,” Roberts said.
Sanctum 1.5 will also be home to an “angel’s cradle” — a safe place where mothers can anonymously give up their babies if they feel they cannot keep them.
Sanctum 1.5 is funded by the federal, provincial and municipal governments and a $1 million contribution by the Grey Nuns of Montreal.
It’s really an individualized approach to care.