The Bridge Foundation broke ground on 18 September on the Phoenix House, two transitional homes for women recovering from addiction on Hell Road, West Bay, the charity's first women's residence since June 2016. Bud Volinsky, the foundation's chief executive officer, told the ceremony that the charity has all of its permits and had signed the funding documents for the project that morning with a benefactor he was "not at liberty" to name.

But he said the foundation must still raise about two-thirds of what it needs to run the homes, and told the Minister for District Administration and Home Affairs, Nickolas DaCosta MP, who was in the audience, "I'm gonna be knocking at your door." He added: "These women need funding as well."

The Ministry told The Caymanian Journal (TCJ) in a written response on 23 September that its CI$155,000-a-year grant to the foundation is "general support" and is not allocated to the Phoenix House. According to the foundation, the Cayman Islands has had no transitional residence for women leaving addiction treatment since the charity's leased women's home closed in June 2016. Men have had the foundation's Hell Road halfway house, which sits beside the new site, since 2012, it said.

Women's treatment gap

The wider position for women was set out in Parliament on 1 May. Answering a question from the Leader of the Opposition, Joseph Hew MP, the Minister of Health, Environment and Sustainability, Katherine Ebanks-Wilks MP, said there were "no active, dedicated residential addiction rehabilitation facilities" in the Cayman Islands for women or for minors. Women's residential services at the Caribbean Haven Residential Centre in Breakers, the government treatment centre run by the Department of Counselling Services, had been suspended in October 2025 because of insufficient staffing, she said, after earlier disruption that she attributed to insufficient funding. Residential rehabilitation was available only to adults and remained focused on men, with women served through outpatient and community-based counselling in the meantime. The Government recognised that the arrangements left significant gaps, the answer said, and the Department's director had advised that women's residential services were expected to restart within 12 weeks. TCJ has not confirmed whether they have resumed. The answer also set out how the system is arranged: medical detoxification is provided only through the Health Services Authority's Medical Detox Unit, which it described as the main gateway into residential care, while cases beyond local capacity, particularly minors, are referred overseas. The Government acknowledged what it called existing gaps in care, inherited challenges and operational disruptions, and said work was under way to re-establish residential rehabilitation for women.

Caribbean Haven opened on 16 November 2000 and a separate women's centre was built there in 2008, according to the Department, which says the centre offers non-medical withdrawal management and long-term residential treatment to legal residents aged 18 and over, based on a therapeutic community model. The Phoenix House is not a treatment centre. The foundation's model takes people after treatment, and its website describes the organisation as the next step once treatment is complete. The Department sits under the Ministry of Health, Environment and Sustainability, the portfolio Mr Panton represented at the ceremony.

Scott Haugh, chairman of the foundation's board, told TCJ at the ceremony that the first two homes should be finished, furnished and ready for residents in nine months to a year. "About this time, I think next year, we'll be sitting here for the ribbon-cutting. That's my goal anyway," he said. The site has room for four homes, but the charity is starting with two because, in Mr Haugh's words, it does not "know quite what the demand will be". The foundation's presentation, dated March 2026, quotes the Department of Counselling Services and Caribbean Haven as saying that in 2022 and 2023 more than 10 women who would have benefited from a transitional home left treatment with limited or no safe housing. TCJ has not independently confirmed that figure with the Department.

Addressing the ceremony, which was attended by Governor Jane Owen, Mr DaCosta and Parliamentary Secretary Wayne Panton MP, who was there as temporary Minister for Health, Environment and Sustainability, Mr Haugh said the aim was for women to build on their sobriety and "ultimately return to their homes clean, sober, happy, successful. That is the goal of why we're here today."

Mr Haugh did not have the total capital cost of the project to hand and did not give the amount raised to date. He told TCJ that the money came from the charity's Green Tie Gala in March, "a significant donor who prefers to be anonymous", other local donors and his own family, which bought the land and gave it to the foundation at no cost. "I think we're about 90 per cent there if I had to do a seat of the pants guess," he said. "We certainly wouldn't do it if we didn't have the money in place, because it's so critical to have these services for women."

Public money is also involved. The Appropriation (Financial Years 2026 and 2027) Act, 2025 provides, under transfer payment TP 69, "Support for the Bridge Foundation", CI$155,000 in each of 2026 and 2027 through Mr DaCosta's ministry. Mr Haugh told TCJ that government support arrives as "a quarterly payment" that helps fund the staff running the men's house and, in time, the women's facility. Mr Volinsky told the ceremony that "it took funding from the government to get us to where we are here today".

The foundation's March 2026 fundraising presentation names Franz Manderson, then Deputy Governor, as its patron and cites a letter from him dated 29 October 2025 saying the women's facility would be established the following year. Mr Manderson retired on 7 July 2026 and was succeeded by Gloria McField-Nixon. The same presentation lists the National Drug Council and the accountancy firm EisnerAmber as providing external evaluation of the foundation's programme, describes the organisation as a certified non-profit, and names the Haugh Foundation among its anchor funders alongside the Green Tie Gala of 20 March 2026, whose beneficiaries were the Bridge Foundation and the Cayman Islands Red Cross.

Mr DaCosta, who also addressed the ceremony, told those present that the foundation's continuum of care is one "which the Ministry also supports through our agencies". "Investing in recovery can strengthen families, support stable employment and reduce the risk of reoffending," he said. He said each woman who comes through the doors of the Phoenix House "deserves to be treated with dignity, respect, with care that recognises her individual circumstances", and that the focus "must be on helping Caymanian women sustain recovery and return safely to family and community life".

TCJ emailed Mr DaCosta on 18 September, copying the Ministry's chief officer, Michael Ebanks, with a deadline of 22 September, and followed up with the Ministry's communications team on 21 September, asking how much the Ministry pays the foundation, over what period, whether the money is for the build or for operations, and whether the foundation receives any other government support in cash or in kind. The Ministry responded on 23 September that it "currently provides The Bridge Foundation with an annual grant of CI$155,000", which it described as "general support" that "is not specifically allocated to the construction or development of Phoenix House, nor is it restricted to any single programme or area of the Foundation's operations". The grant "represents the full extent of the Ministry's direct financial support to The Bridge Foundation", it said. Beyond money, the Ministry said its support "is primarily focused on governance, policy and framework development". The response addressed the Ministry's own support and did not say whether the foundation receives assistance from elsewhere in government. It did not say whether the grant carries reporting or performance conditions, and TCJ did not ask.

In a media release issued after the ceremony, the Ministry of District Administration and Home Affairs described the planned campus as purpose-built for Caymanian women in addiction recovery and said it forms part of the foundation's continuum of care model. Mr DaCosta was accompanied by officials from the Ministry, His Majesty's Cayman Islands Prison Service and the Department of Community Rehabilitation, the release said, along with other senior civil servants. It quoted Mr DaCosta as saying that "a safe place to live and sustained support" could give women the stability they need, and described the project as an investment in their future and in the wellbeing of their families. He commended the foundation's directors, staff, volunteers and donors, the release said, and closed by saying that effective rehabilitation contributes to safer communities. The Ministry's remit, as set out in the same release, includes offender management services.

On results, Mr Volinsky told the ceremony that about 18 men a year come through the Hell Road house and that "our success rate is about 40 per cent", which he said was higher than an international average he had been told was about 38%. He did not say how success is defined, over what period it is measured, or where the international figure comes from. Mr Haugh, asked by TCJ what evidence the foundation holds on long-term outcomes, said results "have been better than national statistics" but gave no figures. Mr Volinsky separately told TCJ that the foundation receives copies of the National Drug Council's evaluations of its programme, circulates them to donors and would email a copy to TCJ. No copy had been received by the newsdesk by 25 September.

How the model works

The foundation describes itself on its website as a sober-living provider that has operated since 2012, with a mission to help curb reoffending through structured transitional housing for non-violent repeat offenders who are recovering from drug or alcohol addiction. Residents arrive by referral from the Conditional Release Board, Probation, the Drug Court, Caribbean Haven or the Counselling Centre, it says. The men's house, Anchor House, is described there as a 2,500 square foot home with three bedrooms and two bathrooms, 24-hour supervision, a curfew, recovery meetings on site and van transport to meetings elsewhere. Residents are required to attend between three and five 12-step meetings a week, are encouraged to find a sponsor, and clean and maintain the house themselves as part of the programme, which also includes job placement.

Its sister organisation, Beacon Farms, offers agricultural work in a sober environment to people in recovery and employs many Bridge residents. On 10 September Beacon Farms brought together government ministries and agencies, treatment centres, counselling services and transitional housing providers for a half-day symposium on the islands' continuum of care, according to a Beacon Farms release carried by the government broadcaster Radio Cayman on 16 September. Participants concluded that the system was well supported from referral through to outpatient treatment and that the weaker points were early prevention, adolescent services, and integration and aftercare, the stage at which a transitional home sits. Ms Ebanks-Wilks and Mr Panton attended, it said, and participants agreed to name leads in each organisation and to meet again before the end of the year.

Mr Volinsky, who described himself at the ceremony as a recovering alcoholic, said the men's house had at times been "down to our last nickels and dimes", with one supporter leaving CI$20 under a rock outside his house for him to collect to pay the electricity bill. "One alcoholic working with another alcoholic, especially people in early recovery, there's no therapy in the world that can match that," he said.

The foundation's earlier women's home operated in West Bay, towards North West Point, in 2015 and 2016, Mr Haugh said, and four women went through it, three of whom completed treatment. The Phoenix House is being built on land the foundation owns, he said, so that it is no longer "dependent on another owner of a property that may come to us after a year or two of success and say, hey, by the way, I'm going to sell the property".

The programme at both the men's house and the planned women's homes is built on the 12-step model, Mr Haugh said. Asked whether its spiritual component is a condition of residency, he said there is "no demand that a religious component be adhered to" and that residents are asked only to identify a "higher power" of their own choosing, which he said could be "the wind" or "the ocean".

The homes will be for women whose primary need is addiction treatment, not a domestic violence shelter, Mr Haugh said, though he described domestic violence, trauma and childhood trauma as common alongside addiction and said the foundation would work with other agencies to provide what he called "wrap-around" care. Women may bring their children "if needed", he said.

The first women are expected to move in once the two homes are powered, furnished and landscaped, which Mr Haugh put at nine months to a year from 18 September. Whether the other two homes follow, he said, depends on the demand the foundation will only be able to measure once the first residents arrive, and on the operating money Mr Volinsky said has yet to be found.