DRUG TREATMENT CENTRE UP TO GRITS

Area Youth Desperately Need A Place To Go

Detailed plans for a much-needed youth residential drug treatment
centre in Ottawa will be made public in a few weeks, but if it's to go
ahead soon, the provincial government will have to find some money in
next week's budget.

It looks as if the Liberals are getting onside, after having sent
mixed messages. Ottawa police Chief Vern White is leading the charge
for the treatment centre, but Premier Dalton McGuinty refused to meet
with him on the matter during last fall's election campaign. A
followup letter to McGuinty last month did not generate a response.
Earlier this month, Liberals on a committee hearing pre-budget
submissions voted down a Progressive Conservative motion to expand
youth drug treatment funding. On the other hand, Municipal Affairs
Minister Jim Watson professes himself to be a strong supporter,
although he thinks the proposed centre might be a little large.

Yesterday, Nepean-Carleton MPP Lisa MacLeod raised the matter in the
Ontario legislature and got what she describes as a "loose commitment"
to support the centre.

The need for a local residential centre couldn't be clearer. Addicts
from Ottawa are being sent to Thunder Bay, home of the province's only
residential treatment program for young teens.

"It doesn't make sense to send them so far away," says Dr. Robert
Cushman, the CEO of the Champlain Local Health Integration Network.
That's the new bureaucracy created by the Liberals to determine where
health-care money goes in Eastern Ontario. It is producing the plan
for the treatment centre.

There is also a small residential treatment centre in Carleton Place,
but it has only 14 beds and handles people from 16 to 22 years of age.
The proposed centre in Ottawa is for those 17 and under. The proposal
is for a 40-bed centre that could help up to 150 youths a year.

Local parents who want treatment for children as young as 11 and 12
are "frantic," about the lack of programs, says Pauline Sawyer,
executive director of the Carleton Place program, itself the only one
in the province for the age group it treats.

Treatment at an earlier age is more effective in helping people beat
addictions, Cushman says. That's why the proposed centre and its focus
on younger teens is so important. Sawyer adds that a local centre is
necessary to allow parents access to their children and to connect
with the services the addicts will need after they leave the program.

Chief White is eyeing a west Kanata site for the treatment centre. It
would involve the purchase and retrofit of a building now used by the
Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre for a much smaller program for
youths with mental-health problems and addictions. With relatively
little construction work to do, the centre could be operational by
next spring, White says.

The cost of the proposal is modest, perhaps $1.5 million in capital
cost and about $4 million a year to operate. With a provincial
health-care budget of $37.5 billion, it doesn't sound like a
backbreaking amount. At least, not until one considers the pittance
Ontario spends now on youth drug treatment.

The province gives money to 46 organizations that offer youth drug
treatment, but the total is only $7 million. Mental health and
addictions "is the disease group that we have to move forward on. It
has always been the poor cousin," Cushman says.

It's possible the government will add to the mental-health and
addiction funding in next week's budget, but if the money is spread
around the province, it probably won't be enough to get Ottawa's
proposed centre going.

The issue of whether drug-addicted teens in Ottawa can get the
treatment they need will come down to the usual determinant, politics.
Jim Watson expresses some optimism about the outcome, because he sits
next to Health Minister George Smitherman at the cabinet table, and
has taken the opportunity to talk up the project a couple of times.
Somehow, when this whole local health integration network system was
put in place, one hoped that health care decisions would be made on
some more rational basis than where Jim and George sit.

It seems like we haven't advanced that much from the Middle Ages, when
peasants would tug at the sleeve of a great lord, begging for a little
something for their village. The big difference is that the people
kindly granting us the service are using our money to pay.

The latest act of mind-blowing provincial generosity was a
$2.2-million health centre for Barrhaven featuring two doctors and
three nurses. This was said to do quite a bit for the needs of
Barrhaven, a community of 60,000 people.

Provincial governments are always fond of telling us that "their"
money isn't limitless. Quite so, but meeting basic health-care needs
shouldn't require extraordinary effort. Nevertheless, we do have an
extraordinary community effort behind the drug treatment centre.
Surely, the Liberals won't say no.