PLAN IN PLACE FOR DETOX CENTRE

The Salvation Army says their proposal for a three-phased drug and
alcohol rehabilitation program will have a positive impact on the
Alberni Valley.

"Even though it may seem expensive to run a program like that, the
return to the community is going to be huge," said captain Neil Wilkinson.

He said the program will help reduce costs to police and emergency
services having to deal with detox cases.

"There are no facilities that exist in the Valley to provide for
those services," Wilkinson said. "Right now, the only place they
really have is at the hospital, or in jail."

Wilkinson said the organization applauds the work of those in the
community trying to address the issue of addictions and rehab in the
Alberni Valley, such as the Crystal Meth Task Force. He stressed that
their three tiered proposal is the leg work of a model that will
require the combined efforts of a number of different parties to pull
it all together. Some of those include the local and provincial
governments, VIHA, and local physicians.

"The SA is not here to grab the bull by the horns and run with it,
we're part of the community, and the problem is a community problem,
and it needs a community solution," Wilkinson said. "It has to be the
community's initiative."

And so, they will be out in the community looking for support. Phase
one of the project involves the establishment of a detox centre.

"What we're looking for is a self contained unit where we can have
four individual apartments supervised on a 24 hour basis to meet the
growing concern of people with alcohol and drug addictions," said
Brent Hobden, Salvation Army community services coordinator.

Phase two consists of a rehabilitation stage in which an individual
goes in for a six-month minimum, taking rehabilitation programs and
participating in work therapy on a farm.

"The benefits behind having it on a farm is it takes people out of
the urban setting into the country so they can really focus on the
spending time dealing with the problems that they've had," Hobden said.

According to Wilkinson, the Salvation Army has had success operating
rehabilitation programs in other communities.

"We'd like to suggest to the community that that would be a very
effective second phase model to follow," he said.

Phase three of the proposal requires a one-year after care housing
for those recovering to get back on their feet in a drug free
environment while still having access to the counselling support system.

"If you were to discharge someone from a program and send them back
to where they were living before, they're going to fall back into the
same systems and structures that they did before," Hobden explained.
"If they don't have something different, a change of lifestyle, they
end up falling back into the same habits."

"What we need is a facility set up where they can be reintroduced
back into functioning community in a safe way," Wilkinson added.

While the Salvation Army has experience in running three phases of
drug and alcohol rehabilitation, Wilkinson said there are very few
organizations that run all three in the same community.

"If the community adopts this, it will be a national model for
addictions recovery," he said.