GRANT FUNDS TEEN DETOX

Center to Fill Growing Need

WORCESTER-- The state Bureau of Substance Abuse Services has awarded
a $1 million grant to Community Healthlink to open the state's first
substance abuse detoxification and stabilization program for adolescents.

The 20-bed program for youths 13 to 17 years old is scheduled to
open in April in Community Healthlink's Thayer Building at the
corner of Queen Street and Jaques Avenue. While some people were
surprised that there is a need for the lower-level of
services provided in six residential facilities across the state --
including one run by Community Healthlink at 280-282 Highland St. --
for children as young as 13, the inpatient facility providing
medical intervention and stabilization to adolescents will provide
even more intense services.

"Sadly there are a lot of kids in Massachusetts using alcohol and
other drugs at a shockingly high volume," said Deborah J. Ekstrom,
Community Healthlink president and chief executive officer. "Some
need to be medically detoxed."

She cited figures of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration reporting two years ago that 13.1 percent of
12- to 17-year-olds in Massachusetts were using illicit drugs such
as marijuana, cocaine, heroin and hallucinogens. SAMHSA also
reported nearly 10 percent of these youths had developed drug and
alcohol dependencies.

The Bay State has some of the highest rates of substance abuse in
the country, according to Michael Botticelli, state Department of
Public Health assistant commissioner for substance abuse services.
While the demonstration project the state Bureau of Substance Abuse
Services is funding in Worcester is partly a result of increasing
levels of substance abuse, Mr. Botticelli said, it also derives from
the knowledge of existing unmet need that the bureau discovered when
it reorganized its residential programs for adolescents 1-1/2 years ago.

Before the bureau implemented a central intake process for the six
residential adolescent programs across the state, "we had some
assumptions that kids at that level of care were being adequately
addressed in other parts of the health care system," the assistant
commissioner said.

But the bureau found "kids were ending up in general hospital beds,
in psychiatric facilities, and they were ending in acute crisis"
because "we were just not servicing kids and families well. We've
never had, as a state and as a nation, a specific continuum of care
of kids with substance abuse issues."

The new inpatient facility, Thayer Adolescent Motivated Behavior
Unit, will be on the fifth floor of the Thayer Building, where
another Community Healthlink program recently closed.

Community Healthlink's 14-day residential program for drivers
convicted a second time for driving while under the influence of
alcohol closed last month. Community Healthlink barely made a profit
on the program after taking it over in 1992 from Rutland State
Hospital, and the drop in enrollment following passage last year of
a law increasing the penalties for drunken driving forced the
program's closure, Ms. Ekstrom said.

The 15-percent drop in enrollment to 797 people, who had to pay $910
each, caused an operating loss of $135,584 in the first 11 months of
this year, she said.

The detox and stabilization program for adolescents will combine the
$1 million state grant with a similar amount from private insurance
to pay for the equivalent of 32 full-time employees, around the
clock. Those include a medical director, licensed clinical director,
operations manager with an expertise in residential care, a
consulting physician, registered nurses, licensed practical nurses,
master's level clinicians, counselors and after-care specialists.

Community Healthlink will develop a model program for youths from
across Massachusetts who need acute, medically monitored substance
abuse treatment and short-term physical and emotional stabilization.
They can remain there for up to 30 days.

The program will be able to treat withdrawal syndromes for all major
drugs of abuse, according to Community Healthlink. Treatment will
include individual, family and group therapy, and can include
medical and psychiatric services.

Daniel Melle, Community Healthlink director of youth and family
services, said the Thayer unit will be "a hub that will move youth
to appropriate after-care services available throughout the state."
He said that "engagement of the family as a full partner in the
aftercare planning process will be critical to the adolescent's recovery."