Our story

Bridge House Kingston was started by Ron Summers.

Ron lived the gap this project is about. He left detox with nowhere safe to go and almost did not make it to treatment. What saved him was a safe place to wait.

Since then he has supported many people through the same wait. He has watched most of them lose the ground they gained in detox, because the wait was spent in the same places and with the same people they were trying to leave.

That is why peers are the heart of this project. People who have been through it know what the wait is like, and what gets someone through it.

Changing how the system works

Ron also wants the system itself to change. The way treatment is organized in Kingston is, in his view, about twenty years out of date. The drugs are different. The people are different. The funding rules are different.

He wants the City, the detox centre, treatment programs and recent clients at one table, with real numbers in front of them. The records this project keeps are the first step.

This page will carry more of Ron's story, in his own words, as he chooses to share it.