Article content

Its requested funding boost denied, a London social agency that supports the city’s most vulnerable is eyeing staff lay-offs and cuts to how long adults can stay in its residential addiction treatment facility.

Mission Services of London will be reducing staff numbers and making changes to the way it runs its residential addiction treatment facility for men, the Quintin Warner House, this spring after its request for a more than $700,000 increase to its previous funding was denied by the provincial agency that allocates health care dollars in much of Southwestern Ontario.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Layoffs coming at Mission Services after funding boost denied Back to video

“There’s one word to describe it all, and it’s ‘sad.’ This is very sad. But we’re in sort of that financial box,” said Peter Rozeluk, executive director Mission Services. “Going forward, we just cannot sustain it.”

The agency will be closing 21 crash beds at its York Street shelter by April 1. The beds handled 7,690 stays in the 2017-18 budget year. Ending the program will affect about a dozen jobs, Rozeluk said.