Turning Point Society

Turning Point Society Turning Point is a registered charity supporting safer, healthier communities for Central Albertans.

Formally known as the Central Alberta AIDS Network Society (CAANS), Turning Point was established in 1988 as a community-based response to Central Alberta's HIV/AIDS crisis. In addition to health promotion, our organization has since expanded its reach, incorporating programming specific to harm reduction, night reach, rural outreach, overdose prevention, and a women’s program. These programs and services extend to communities across Central Alberta (including Red Deer, Drumheller, Hanna, Camrose, Flagstaff, Samson, Stettler, Rocky Mountain House, O’Chiese First Nation, and Wetaskiwin). Whether you're looking for harm reduction and STBBI preventative resources or are in need of ongoing support, our professionals are here to help. Turning Point continues to identify and support the complex needs of each community we serve, providing education, supplies, and services with compassion, confidentiality, respect, collaboration, and empowerment.

This will always be our response, rooting our addiction services in connection, compassion & care. Through a non judgeme...
02/15/2026

This will always be our response, rooting our addiction services in connection, compassion & care. Through a non judgemental, trauma informed lens we continue to meet people where they’re at, empowering autonomy and authentic healing.

We are so moved and honoured by this support from our community. Thank you 100 Women Who Care - Red Deer for recognizing...
02/10/2026

We are so moved and honoured by this support from our community. Thank you 100 Women Who Care - Red Deer for recognizing the importance of our work.

When the province cut our funding to core programming for vulnerable community members including street level pregnancy services, and without funding any transitional programming or ensuring continuity of care for the clients and partners that relied on us, many folks were left abandoned. We’ve created transitional outreach programming to lessen this impact and this funding will help us ensure vulnerable women and others have improved access to the supports they need.

We’re so grateful, thank you for seeing this need and helping fill it.

A huge thank you to our community supports who continue to show up for us over and over again. Bottoms Up Scrubs recentl...
02/10/2026

A huge thank you to our community supports who continue to show up for us over and over again. Bottoms Up Scrubs recently did a winter gear drive on our behalf, and Silver Cove donated proceeds of a raffle they hosted. Second Harvest helps agencies in our community by organizing a food network that addresses food waste and food insecurity, with Bower Starbucks being a part of that network that regularly hooks us up with food and snacks that we then distribute to those that need it.

Bottoms Up Scrubs
Silver Cove Red Deer
Second Harvest Deuxième Récolte

01/29/2026

Are you a local business, social or health agency or community member that has concerns about the limitation of available resources for those experiencing homelessness or addiction as it presents downtown and throughout our city and need support understanding these issues or addressing the impact?

Do you or your teams need access to overdose prevention, overdose response or social diversion supports from Turning Point?

Please reach out, we want to help! Although our funding and programming has shrunk, we are still here and carry many years of experience supporting this population and our community. We want to help as much as possible.

Let’s connect, partner, and support each other. We care for our community and for all those in it.

Call us at 403-346-8858 or email administration@turningpoint-ca.org

01/25/2026

You’re already recycling your bottles. This is just a way to turn that habit into local support for organizations doing important work right here in Central Alberta.

When you donate your bottles in January, you’ll be supporting Turning Point Society in Red Deer and Blackfalds FCSS in Blackfalds.

It’s a simple system with real impact:
▪️Recycle your bottles at any COSMOS Bottle Depot and choose the Blue Bin option at the refund ATM, or
▪️Drop your empties into one of our bright blue bins around town, and we’ll take care of the rest.

Big thanks to our Blue Bin sponsors, Zed 98.9 Red Deer and New Country 95.5, for helping keep this program going and keeping community connections strong.

01/19/2026

Hello Community. You may have heard through the media and our channels that Turning Point was collaborating on a winter warm up space this season with Shining Mountains and with funding from the City of Red Deer.
Unfortunately we need to share an important update; that we had made the difficult and heavy decision to withdraw from this project as of last week and we informed our partners of this decision on Tuesday January 13th, 2025.

This decision is the result of unforseen circumstances, and difficulties in relation to logistics, operations and road blocks to a successful participation on this project.

Given our recent program losses (including the drop in space we operated until November 2025), our agency is working with much more limited resources than prior, and we are actively working on strategy and scope of participation in ongoing service provision; being mindful of how these program losses have affected our clients and community.

Individuals experiencing homelessness ( as well as our other previous program participants) are and have been undoubtely at increased risk this winter and we had hoped to reduce inevitable harm through participation in an additional warm up space, and are deeply disappointed that we will not be able to provide such a necessary service.

For further background, Turning Point historically operated a drop in space that was well utilized and addressed many of the basic, social and health needs of those that are now at increased risk this winter. Last year our drop in saw 80-100 unique individuals daily who utilized our space for warming up, to rest and center themselves, for a washroom and access to a phone, for a place to store their mail, for food and clothing, and in addition to the numerous other wrap around services we provided. The majority of those utilizing this drop in space were either unhoused or at risk of being uhhoused.
When the recent major funding loss to Turning Point from the provincial government was announced, we shared our concerns of increased client vulnerabilties with stakeholders and decision makers, highlighting the incredible gaps this drop in closure would create in our city. We had concerns of local fallout to other agencies, businesses and shelters, especially as the province cut our funding right before winter hit with only three months notice (we have been providing services since 1988). We offered at that time (in summer and fall) to continue to run a basic needs warm up space in our building (which remains set up appropriately for just this) for all of winter to ensure a smoother transiton for program particpants and the community as a whole, but no funding was made available and no transition or continuity of services was provided by the province as inititally promised and as was stated would occur in the media by our ADM of Health.

Unfortunately today we are seeing many of those concerns we anticipated occurring, as businesses and community members are expressing the devastating effects of insufficient shelter space and loss of social and health services in our community. As an agency we truly wish we could do more, and that our expertise and experience could be better utilized to support.

At this time, we are still operating our outreach services -Dayreach and Nightreach, as well as offering Naloxone training and kit distribution. We recognize these program themselves are not enough to fill the gap that our previous well utilized and appraised programming losses have left, but we remain committed to our values, and to our contribution to safer and healthier community. We will continue to adapt and to serve in whatever capacity we are able to, where fits our agency values and client needs.

Thank you for the continued support, and if you have further questions or concerns about this information then please reach out to us to clarify. Thank you to all those that applied to work at the warm up space with us and we hope to work with you on a different project soon.

01/15/2026
Before the holidays, Hailee from Third Eyed Rabbiiit - Hailee  generously donated $170 to us, which she fundraised throu...
01/06/2026

Before the holidays, Hailee from Third Eyed Rabbiiit - Hailee generously donated $170 to us, which she fundraised through a virtual yoga nidra class. Thank you so much! It is always so cool to see the different ways our community comes together to create an impact.

Hailee has posted her January calendar on her socials, so be sure to check it out. When we all support each other, a lot of good can happen.

Thank you Cosmos Group of Companies !
01/05/2026

Thank you Cosmos Group of Companies !

Thank you, everyone. We are so thankful for how our community showed up when we called out for support. We had so many v...
12/22/2025

Thank you, everyone. We are so thankful for how our community showed up when we called out for support. We had so many volunteers that we were able to accomplish our goals this holiday season, and we are now putting a pause on volunteer opportunities until the new year. If you were interested in volunteering but did not have a chance this holiday season, please keep your eye out for future opportunities. For now, we sincerely thank everyone.

UPDATE: All of the bananas have now been spoken for!Thank you so much to everyone who volunteered to help bake and turn ...
12/16/2025

UPDATE: All of the bananas have now been spoken for!

Thank you so much to everyone who volunteered to help bake and turn this generous donation into delicious goodies. We are incredibly grateful for your kindness and holiday spirit — thank you for helping make a difference!

🧑‍🍳👩‍🍳 Calling all bakers! 🍪🧁

We received a large donation of bananas, and unfortunately we won’t be able to hand them out before they go bad. So what’s the next best thing? Banana bread, muffins, and cookies!

With the holidays here, many of you may already be baking — would you be willing to add a little extra to your holiday baking?
We’re looking for volunteers who could take a few bunches of bananas and turn them into baked goods so we can share with individuals during our outreach.

If this sounds like something you’d enjoy helping with, please reach out to us. We would be so thankful! 🍌✨

Come volunteer with us! We need some help leading up into the holidays. Help us package snacks and build gift bags for N...
12/14/2025

Come volunteer with us! We need some help leading up into the holidays. Help us package snacks and build gift bags for NightReach Days of Giving. With our reduced staffing because of the loss of many of our programs, we need help from volunteers now more than ever. If you're interested in giving back to our community in a meaningful way this holiday season, reach out to us!

403-346-8858
administration@turningpoint-ca.org

Address

Red Deer, AB

Opening Hours

Monday 9:15am - 4:30pm
Tuesday 9:15am - 4:30pm
Wednesday 9:15am - 4:30pm
Thursday 9:15am - 4:30pm
Friday 9:15am - 4:30pm

Telephone

+14033468858

Alerts

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Our Story

Turning Point (formerly the Central Alberta AIDS Network Society (CAANS)) is the local charity responsible for all of the HIV/STI/Hep C prevention and support in the AHS Central Zone. This service area extends from Drumheller to Drayton Valley (330 km) and from Nordegg to the Saskatchewan border (approximately 350 km). The total area equals 66,148 (9.59% of Alberta) square kilometres and contains a population of over 445,000 (12.06% of provincial population). If you want to contact staff related to a specific issue you can call the office (346-8858 or 1-877 346-8858 toll free) or email us at administration@turningpoint-ca.org. You can ask us about anything including: s*xual health, access to condoms, volunteering, safer drug use, s*x work, harm reduction, street school, overdose prevention including Naloxone, outreach, workshops and other capacity building available.