News

The Next Steps Program Development Survey received 33 completed and consented responses between July 2 and August 20, 2026. We invited feedback from people with a range of perspectives, including professionals, peers, Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers, and community members. Respondents represented all five B.C. health regions, including 9 respondents from Kamloops and surrounding communities. Five respondents self-identified as Indigenous, including 2 Indigenous Elders/Knowledge Keepers.

Strong Support for the Program

All 33 respondents (100%) rated a bridge program for pregnant and postpartum parents in early recovery as important, with 29 respondents (88%) rating it very important.

The most important immediate supports identified were:

• Staying together with baby: 23 (70%)
• Infant care support: 17 (52%)
• Recovery support: 16 (49%)
• Food, transportation and other basic needs: 14 (42%)
• Cultural, spiritual or identity-based supports: 12 (36%)
• Help navigating MCFD or delegated Indigenous child and family service agencies: 10 (30%)

Program Design

Respondents strongly supported a model that combines recovery programming with the realities of pregnancy, postpartum recovery and parenting an infant.

Key priorities included:

• Baby-friendly spaces: 88%
• A combination of group and one-to-one support: 82%
• Staff knowledgeable about trauma, substance use, parenting, postpartum needs and child welfare: 82%
• Flexible programming times: 70%
• Practical prompting and coaching: 64%

Of the 30 people who answered the programming schedule question, 25 (83%) preferred two or more shorter programming blocks rather than one continuous two-hour session.

Safety Priorities

Respondents identified several areas requiring specific planning and staff capacity:

• Postpartum mental health crisis: 26 (79%)
• Return to substance use: 23 (70%)
• Safe parenting, infant care and feeding: 20 (61%)
• Infant sleep safety: 15 (46%)
• Family or intimate partner violence: 13 (39%)
• Unsafe or concerning visitors: 12 (36%)

Recurring Themes

Written responses consistently described a missing transition point between hospital or withdrawal management and longer-term recovery programs or community living.

Major barriers identified included:

• Unstable or unsafe housing
• Lack of infant and parenting support
• Difficulty accessing treatment while keeping parent and baby together
• Child welfare involvement
• Stigma
• Transportation barriers
• Expectations of newly postpartum parents that may be unrealistic during early recovery

Respondents emphasized the importance of a calm, welcoming, home-like and non-punitive environment, while still maintaining clear safety expectations and substance-free boundaries. There was also strong support for individualized responses to return to substance use rather than automatic discharge following an off-site return to use.

Overall Finding

The survey provides strong provincial evidence of a significant gap for pregnant and newly postpartum parents who need a safe, structured bridge between acute services and longer-term recovery or independent community living while remaining with their infant.

The findings closely support the proposed Next Steps model: small-scale, home-like, parent-and-infant focused, recovery-oriented, flexible and staffed by people who understand the intersecting realities of substance use, postpartum health, parenting and child welfare.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to complete the survey and share their knowledge, experience and perspectives with us.

Feedback from Professionals, Peer Support Workers, Community Partners, Families, Community Members and People with Lived/Living Experience 

BCAPOP is currently developing Next Steps, a proposed supportive recovery assisted living program in Kamloops for pregnant people and newly parenting birthers with their babies. Next Steps is being designed to address a gap that, to BCAPOP’s knowledge, does not currently exist as a dedicated program model: a short-term, home-like bridge for pregnant people and birthing parents with their infants leaving hospital, detox, crisis stabilization, or another immediate care setting who are not yet ready or able to move directly into existing treatment, longer-term supportive housing, bed-based programs, or independent housing.

The proposed program would support residents for approximately 2 to 4 months in a safe, structured, recovery-oriented environment where birthing parents can stabilize, remain connected to their infants, and receive in-house practical, emotional, parenting, cultural, and recovery support while planning their next step. BCAPOP is not an Indigenous-led organization. We recognize the importance of relationship, accountability, cultural humility, and guidance from Indigenous partners, communities, and knowledge holders as this program is developed.

BCAPOP is seeking feedback from people across BC, including people with lived/living experience, peer support workers, Indigenous partners and community members, health and social service providers, pregnancy outreach workers, child and family service providers, families, funders, and community partners.

Your input will help shape the program model, policies, partnerships, staffing, cultural safety, and resident supports. This survey is voluntary, and you may skip any program model question. Please do not include identifying information about clients, patients, residents, or families.

Estimated time: 20–30 minutes.

COMPLETE SURVEY

Issue Date: Thursday, November 17^th, 2025 

Proposal Due Date: Monday, December 8^th, 2025, 11:59pmPT 

BCAPOP is seeking proposals from qualified consultants or firms to develop a comprehensive initiation plan and funding strategy for establishing a bed-based perinatal substance use treatment centre for mother/parent and infant dyads in Kamloops, BC.  The proposed centre will provide integrated perinatal healthcare, mental health, and substance use treatment services designed to support the dyads in a medically supervised, trauma-informed and culturally safe environment. The goal of this RFP is to identify a partner capable of delivering a detailed initiation plan which includes licensing requirements, funding strategy options, and the implementation roadmap to open the treatment centre within the next 5years.  

More information please click here: NEXT STEPS RFP Comprehensive Plan for a Perinatal Substance Use Treatment Centre Nov 2025.pdf

We are pleased to share our Sponsorship & Exhibitor Package for our next conference here. 

BCAPOP would like to share with all our members, partners and donors that our Heathy Care Pregnancy Program (HCPP) pilot project concluded as of March 31, 2025, after five insightful years.

HCPP was designed to improve outcomes for perinatal people who use or have used substances and their infants, who are not already connected to healthcare services. The pilot program was successful in demonstrating how the HCPP approach and inreach workers can be utilized in communities to support some of the most marginalized dyads to overcome barriers to health, wellness and togetherness. You can read our external evaluation that was done by the Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health here.

Since 2022, the funding for the pilot project decreased by 70% and BCAPOP could not sustain the program’s capacity, standards and values that allowed the inreach workers to make such a positive impact on the population they walked alongside and supported.

In 2025-26, BCAPOP will be dedicated to capturing and preserving the pilot project learnings and supporting the sites to sunset the program while transitioning participants to existing services and programs, where available.     

Conclusion Steps for 2025-26:

• All current host sites are welcome to continue their HCPP independently with alternate funding and/or integrate the program into their current programs and services. Each organization is empowered to create their own HCPP integration or sunset plan, which may include transitioning participants to other existing services and programs.  BCAPOP will no longer be providing direct operational support or oversight to the sites who choose to continue HCPP.
• The current host sites will be transitioned from accessing program resources from the online HCPP Portal to a digital HCPP Program Toolkit during the final year.  
• BCAPOP will create an online HCPP Training Program which will be available to pregnancy outreach programs, perinatal professionals and helping peers who wish to adapt and utilize the HCPP approaches in their services. This training will be offered free of charge for two years.
• BCAPOP will develop and disseminate a pilot project conclusion feedback tool collate the findings into a final report that will be shared with all sites, PHSA, partners and the public.

BCAPOP hosted an in-person conclusion meeting with the current HCPP sites in May 2025 to gather the sites’ learnings and to thank the host organizations for their work over the last five years.

BCAPOP would like to thank the Provincial Perinatal Substance Use Program, BC Women’s Mental Health and Substance Use Programs + Initiatives, our partners, regional health authorities, BCAPOP Members, donors, HCPP inreach workers and all the acute care sites and Program Members who made this pilot program so successful. This work would not have been possible without you.

Lastly, BCAPOP would like to formally thank and acknowledge the following HCPP host organizations and acute care sites for their participation in the pilot:

• Kamloops- The Tree/Royal Inland Hospital
• Powell River- Lift Community Services/Powell River General Hospital
• 100 Mile House/Williams Lake - Cariboo Family Enrichment Centre & Cariboo Friendship Society/ Cariboo Memorial Hospital
• Duncan – Hiiye'yu Lelum (House of Friendship) Society/Cowichan District Hospital
• Burnaby/New Westminster- Burnaby Family Life/Royal Columbian Hospital
• Smithers- Dze L K’ant Friendship Centre Society/Bulkley Valley District Hospital
• Port Alberni- Port Alberni Friendship Centre & Port Alberni Public Health Unit/West Coast General Hospital
• Terrace – Terrace Child Development Centre/Mills Memorial Hospital
• Prince George – PG & District Elizabeth Fry Society/University Hospital of Northern BC
• Richmond – Ellizabeth Fry Society of Greater Vancouver & Atira Women's Resource Society/Richmond Hospital
• Surrey – Options Community Services/Surrey Memorial Hospital

To be notified when the HCPP online training is released, please ensure you sign up for our E-News Snapshot here.

BCAPOP gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the Provincial Perinatal Substance Use Program, BC Women’s Mental Health and Substance Use Programs + Initiatives for this pilot project funding.

The BCAPOP Board of Directors (BOD) is seeking applications for new board directors including one who can fill the position of Treasurer and who is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA)and also looking for increased representation from people who self-identify as Indigenous.   

BCAPOP’s BOD is a volunteer board and as per Bylaw7.1 No director shall be remunerated for being or acting as a director or holding a Board position, but a director may be reimbursed for all expenses necessarily and reasonably incurred while engaged in the affairs of the society.   

Potential BCAPOP Board Directors are put forward by the BOD and elected by the Program Members during our Annual General Meeting (AGM)for three-year terms and as per Bylaw 4.2, have the option to run for re-election to serve up to three consecutive terms for a total of up to nine years. 

For more details see the posting here.

Posting closes June 30th, 2025. 

As part of BCAPOP's commitment to reconciliation, BCAPOP will be offering one table in our exhibitor hall to an Indigenous Artist to sell their creations, art of crafts.  We are asking that people who self-identify as Indigenous and who would like an opportunity to sell their art/creations/crafts at our 26th Annual Perinatal Conference to enter the random draw here: https://forms.office.com/r/snqzxLSq0z

Draw will take place on May 5th at 9:00amPT and all entries will be notified of the result.  The table will be available to the artist on May13th & 14th, 2025 to sell their goods to an audience of over 185 perinatal professionals from across BC.  There will be no other vendors at this conference, only non-profit exhibitors.  

Please join us in congratulating Andrea, Grady, BA, MSc. on her promotion to Director of Operations at BCAPOP. Andrea has been a valued team member of BCAPOP since January of 2021 and was originally hired as the Project Manager of the Healthy Care Pregnancy Program (HCPP) Pilot Project. As the HCPP pilot wraps up, we are honoured to welcome Andrea to this permanent position that works closely with our Executive Director overseeing the daily operations of BCAPOP.

Congrats Andrea!

We are pleased to re-open our application process for interested applicants to join our helping peer network advisory. 

This network’s purpose is to bring together helping peers with lived and/or living experience with perinatal substance use (PSU) from across BC to collaborate to improve the engagement experience of current and future helping peers. The network serves as a platform for BCAPOP to provide training and engage with helping peers in a meaningful, respectful and trauma-informed way to gain direct feedback on new tools, ideas, or programming from those who are volunteering and/or working in peer support roles.  

BCAPOP is looking for up to 5 new helping peers to join this network from April 1, 2025 - March 31, 2026.  Please review the Terms of Reference and if interested, submit your application by Monday, March 31, 2025 via the below. 

Application Link: Application of Interest: BCAPOP's Provincial Perinatal Substance Use Peer Support Network

We are equitably trying to recruit members that self-identify as Indigenous and/or reside in areas of the province that are not already represented on this network. Priority will be given to these applicants that meet the application criteria.

Please contact Andrea Grady, Project Manager (andrea@bcapop.ca) if you have any questions regarding this network or application.

Dear BCAPOP team, 

I wanted to share the resources that the Reproductive Infectious Diseases Team at UBC recently developed to promote knowledge of syphilis in pregnancy and the general importance of prenatal care. There is a public-facing resource, a Linktree to learn more about syphilis, and a short report for providers about the current situation in BC.

• Syphilis-Resource-Nov-2024.pdf

• Linktree - Syphilis Resource List

• Brief-Syphilis-Report-British-Columbia-Nov-2024.pdf

We would like to acknowledge the incredible contributions of our collaborators from the BC Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres, and, our artist, Lise Gillies. 

We would love it if these could be shared through your networks or on any of your platforms. We are also happy to print and ship these to any folks who express interest.

Please let me know if there is anything else you need from us to make this happen!

Thank you so much.

Warmly,

Roisin Delaney

Knowledge Mobilization Coordinator

Reproductive Infectious Diseases

BC Women's Hospital + Health Centre

E: roisin.delaney@cw.bc.ca / www.whri.org