'It's a good step': Saskatoon Tribal Council opens reintegration facility for women

The Saskatoon Tribal Council (STC) has opened a transition house for women moving back into society following incarceration at the Pine Grove Correctional Centre.

The unit bears the name Īkwēskīcik iskwēwak, which means “turning your life around."

“The 18 women that will be walking thru this door will have a home. Something they never had before,” said STC Chief Mark Arcand.

The transition home will house women on probation and parole.

“We have women that are coming right from Pine Grove that will be part of the facility,” said Arcand.

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The unit is located at 115 Columbian Place in Saskatoon and will offer up to 18 months of support for women who have been jailed for minor offences. The province says it is the first provincially funded indigenous designed and led reintegration program.

Funding has been provided by the Federal Government, the province of Saskatchewan, the City of Saskatoon, and the Saskatoon Housing Initiatives Partnership (SHIP).

“If you think about people coming into the system. More often than not they have come back once, twice, three, four, five times, and to intervene at the right point and stop that churn is what we're focused on with this facility,” Drew Wilby, Ministry of Corrections, Policing and Public Safety.

Units will provide mental health and addiction help, as well as traditional and Western cultural support. The unit will have 10 people working per shift.

“The importance is we have too many women that are missing right now,” said Arcand. “They don’t have a place to go. We see this at our Emergency Wellness Center.”

Currently, there are approximately 100 people on the waitlist to get into Īkwēskīcik iskwēwak.

“It’s a good step and a positive step, but we need more,” said Arcand.

Six people will move into the unit on Monday and the remaining 12 are expected to arrive by May 1st.