Brett McKay, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Investigative Journalism Foundation

Recovery Alberta is closing the addiction treatment program at Henwood Treatment Centre in Edmonton, the IJF has learned. The decision to end the program came as a shock to staff and hundreds of Albertans seeking addiction treatment, and the lack of transparency surrounding the closure is fuelling questions about the Alberta government’s plans for the site.

The details of Henwood’s closure have not previously been reported.

With 62 residential treatment beds, Henwood is the largest provincially-run voluntary addiction treatment centre in the Edmonton region. Operations at Henwood were temporarily suspended in late June due to flooding. Sources familiar with the situation have told the IJF that on Aug. 20, staff were informed that Recovery Alberta is permanently closing the treatment program.

The IJF is not identifying these sources because they are currently employed by provincial health authorities and fear they would face retaliation for speaking publicly about this matter.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Mental Health and Addiction said in a statement that the Henwood Treatment Centre in Edmonton “closed for the foreseeable future following significant damage from overland flooding, with all clients transitioned to alternative addiction treatment and recovery services from local providers.” 

“We continue to investigate the extent of the damage at the Henwood Treatment Centre and are working closely with Recovery Alberta to determine the future of the facility. The safety and well-being of patients, staff and the community will continue to guide decisions,” the spokesperson said.

Staff told the IJF that while patients and employees had been temporarily relocated due to the flooding and ongoing repairs to the building, they had believed Henwood would return to business as usual after the restoration was completed. Staff said they were kept in the dark about what was happening with the facility and were blindsided at the meeting with Recovery Alberta.

Henwood employed addiction counsellors, mental health therapists, psychologists, recreational therapists, nurses and other health and support workers, most of whom are members of either the Health Sciences Association of Alberta (HSAA) or the United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) unions.

UNA told the IJF that at least 12 of their members have been affected by the closure, and that their positions are subject to the section of the union’s collective agreement dealing with layoff and recall.

HSAA confirmed they have 20 members at Henwood, but the union was not able to provide any further information.

HSAA members employed at Henwood told the IJF that some positions are being relocated to the Alberta Hospital in Edmonton, but have not yet been given full details about their new positions, and others have yet to learn where they will be moved.

For hundreds of Albertans on the waiting list at Henwood, the loss of the program means they are back to square one in their search for addiction treatment.

The wait time to get a bed in Henwood’s four-week residential treatment program was between one and four months depending on the client, sources told the IJF. At the time Henwood stopped accepting new applications in late June, there were almost 600 people in the queue waiting for a spot to open up, four sources said.

Over the summer, employees were reportedly told to call the people on the wait list and tell them their referral was being closed and they would need to reapply once Henwood reopened. 

“There’s a lot of unhappy people. Clients were not happy when we called them to say we’re gonna have to close,” a member of Henwood’s addiction treatment team told the IJF.

Some clients who had been waiting for weeks for the call from Henwood telling them a spot was available burst into tears when given the news.

“People are desperate. It takes so long to get treatment,” a second Henwood employee said.

Alberta stopped publicly reporting wait times for voluntary addiction treatment programs in 2019. In March, the IJF filed an access to information request for wait times at treatment centres from 2020 on, but was told that data is “not something Recovery Alberta officially tracks.”

According to the province’s addiction bed dashboard, there are currently 30 open adult addiction treatment beds out of 236 available in the Edmonton health corridor, which stretches between the borders of B.C. and Saskatchewan. As of Aug. 23, only three adult addiction treatment beds in the city of Edmonton are open.

Henwood is no longer included in the addiction bed dashboard.

During the Aug. 20 meeting, representatives from Recovery Alberta reportedly told staff that there was no available space in the Edmonton region where the program could be relocated. Work on the facility is ongoing, and an assessment to determine the cost of repairs is planned for September, but questions from staff about what the government intended to do with the building went unanswered.

A source who attended the meeting told the IJF there appeared to be no clear plan to add equivalent voluntary treatment beds elsewhere in the city, only that the government representatives reiterated their commitment to move to a more “recovery-oriented” system.

Since 2019, Alberta’s United Conservative Party government has invested heavily in what it calls a “recovery-oriented” model of care, which focuses on abstinence-based in-patient programs in so-called recovery communities throughout the province. Five of these recovery communities funded by the province are currently open – in Red Deer, Lethbridge, Gunn, Calgary and Blood Tribe – and six more are being developed.

Henwood staff expressed concerns about whether the recovery communities would be able to meet the needs of their clients or even accept many of the complex patients they see in their program.

The recovery community closest to Edmonton is about 80 km west of Edmonton in Gunn, Alta. These long-term residential rehab facilities offer programs between three months and one year in length. Though they are publicly funded, they are privately operated and rely on credentialed peer support workers, recovery coaches, to help run their programs. 

People with lived experience in recovery need to take about 70 hours of training to become designated as a recovery coach and costs of training are covered by the province.

Henwood staff said many people seeking help aren’t ready or aren’t in a position to commit to these long-term residential programs that separate them from their existing support network in Edmonton. 

Recovery communities also don’t accept patients with complex health and mental health issues, including being unable to support people who are on multiple medications, staff at Henwood told the IJF.

A confidential Recovery Alberta planning document from 2025, obtained by the IJF, shows that the province had initially chosen Henwood as an interim location for secure “compassionate intervention” beds needed to implement involuntary addiction treatment legislation. The planning document stated that the centre’s voluntary addiction treatment program would need to be closed for renovations to align with a fall 2026 launch.

Alberta’s 2026 budget instead allotted funds to create interim beds at Alberta Hospital in Edmonton.

Several Henwood staff told the IJF they feel the province is now capitalizing on the flooding to cut their program, and said they had concerns about what would take its place in the historic building.

In response to questions about plans to add more voluntary addiction treatment spaces in Edmonton to compensate for the loss of Henwood’s 62 beds, the mental health and addiction ministry said they “recognize the importance of increasing access to residential addiction treatment for people in Edmonton, and are continuing to invest in just that.”

“We recently announced a $30 million investment to add more than 400 new treatment, housing and stabilization beds in the Edmonton area. Twenty-five new long-term addiction treatment beds recently opened at the Lakeview Recovery Community and 75 more beds are expected to come online later this year, which will go a long way to increasing capacity in Edmonton,” a spokesperson for the ministry said.

The 400 beds announced for the Edmonton area include 25 additional beds in Lakeview Recovery Community, recovery communities in Enoch Cree Nation and near Métis Crossing still under construction, 110 medical shelter beds at Hope Mission in Edmonton, as well as the new integrated stabilization centre at Edmonton police headquarters.  

Operated by Edmonton Police Service and Recovery Alberta, the integrated stabilization centre will hold people who are detained for causing public disorder but aren’t facing criminal charges.

Recovery Alberta did not respond to questions about the closure of the Henwood treatment program before the time of publication.

Learn more about our News Monitoring here.

---