SURREY WANTS A SOBERING CENTRE

Facility Would Be Unique In Lower Mainland

SURREY - The city is pushing hard to get money for a unique new
"sobering centre" near Surrey Memorial Hospital for its drug users
and alcoholics.

Like Vancouver, Surrey's police and hospitals are facing a rising
tide of people who are addicted, alcoholic and mentally ill, which is
absorbing a huge proportion of their resources.

In one more attempt to cope with that phenomenon, Surrey has decided
to create a centre dedicated to that group.

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts confirmed the city has recently acquired
land for the centre near the hospital at 96th Avenue and King George
Highway, which is also close to the city's two other detox facilities.

Watts's council identified a sobering centre two years ago as part of
its new crime-reduction strategy.

The centre, which would be unlike any other facility in the Lower
Mainland, would give police and ambulance crews a place to take
people high on drugs or alcohol.

It would also incorporate treatment beds, an addictions-treatment
team that will also deal with people's mental-health problems, and
transitional housing in the building.

Watts said that will help cope with the same problem Vancouver police
identified in a report this week, that they are spending 30 to 50 per
cent of their time dealing with people who are mentally ill.

"The sobering centre becomes the entry point into the system" for
those kinds of people, said Watts. That way, police don't have to
wait around in emergency wards with people they've picked up who
clearly have multiple problems. Instead, the centre's staff can deal
with both the addictions and the mental-health problems in a setting
away from the regular hospital.

The main impetus for the centre is coming from overwhelmed police and
emergency-room staff.

"Right now, police are picking these people up and they're ending up
in cells [or the emergency ward]," said Watts.

Surrey Memorial gets about about 30,000 visits a year from people
with drug and alcohol problems, some of them also mentally ill,
looking for a place to "come down" from whatever substance they were using.

Coun. Judy Villeneuve said the centre will give people a place to go
without referrals, which are required by the two existing detox
facilities. It would also take pressure off the emergency ward.

"It's a bit of a safe haven for people," said Villeneuve. "The
problem with the emergency ward now is that it has no place to
release people to. The beauty of this centre is that services
[between the hospital, detox facilities, and sobering centre] can be linked."

Housing Minister Rich Coleman said his ministry is fully behind the concept.

"They're trying to be very innovative and we're there for them."

With BC Housing willing to put up the capital for the building,
Surrey now needs money from the Fraser Health Authority to operate
the services.

Meryl McDowell, the head of Fraser's mental health and addictions
services, said the authority will be looking for the money in the
provincial budget Feb. 19.

The authority, working with three government ministries, has put in a
proposal under the province's crime-reduction secretariat for
operating money for the centre.

The only similar centre in the province is in Victoria.

Vancouver's drug policy coordinator, Donald MacPherson, said all
Vancouver has is a basic facility next to Vancouver Detox, which has
little more than mats on the floor.

The concept is "a good idea," he said.

It's been a long time coming. A regional homelessness report from
2001 urged that a sobering centre be built to serve the
south-of-Fraser suburbs.

Villeneuve said the enthusiasm for the sobering centre is one more
sign of the new approach Surrey has been taking to social problems recently.

After years of resisting social services for fear that they would
attract more social problems, Surrey "has moved in a really positive
new direction," she said.