DETOX CENTER CLOSURE CREATES BREACH

At Least Until September, There's No Shelter Especially For Those On Drugs,
Alcohol

Until it was shut down June 20, an average of about 20 men and women under
the influence of drugs or alcohol would sleep every night at the Rescue
Mission's detoxification center.

It's unclear where they are spending their nights now or where they should
go, until Syracuse Behavioral Healthcare starts up its detoxification center
in September with the $630,000 a year Onondaga County pulled from the Rescue
Mission operation.

Some of them have come to the Salvation Army's Adult Rehabilitation Center
at 2433 Erie Blvd. E., said Jeremy Klemanski, director of operations. But
that center - and many homeless shelters - won't accept people who are
heavily intoxicated.

He estimated that about eight or nine intoxicated people came to the center
because the Rescue Mission's detoxification facility was closed. He said
some were sent to a center in Utica to get sober.

County Mental Health Commissioner David Brownell, who controls the
detoxification contract, said last week that intoxicated people should be
referred to the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program operating out of
emergency rooms at St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center and University and
Community General hospitals.

Ron Lagoe, executive director of the Hospital Executive Council, said he
learned of that idea by reading it in the newspaper. He is leading an effort
to save and bolster the fiscally fragile psychiatric emergency service.

"We didn't get a formal notification," he said.

Lagoe said CPEP is recovering from a $1 million-a-year deficit and facing a
best-case scenario of losing $650,000 a year. Adding any more patients to
that situation is critical, he said.

"The county really needed to tell us on the front end that this was coming,
and they didn't," he said.

Lagoe said the CPEP emergency rooms have not yet seen an influx of
intoxicated people, but he's worried it will happen.

"We need to have facts. How many of these people are there? How many are
likely to be referred to CPEP?" he said.

It's unclear how many people use basic detoxification services, which were
provided exclusively in the county by the Rescue Mission for the last 30
years, until June 20. Neither the Rescue Mission nor the county keep such
statistics.

Chasz Parker, Rescue Mission executive director, estimated 300 intoxicated
people would have no appropriate place to go during July and August with the
absence of a detoxification center.

Last year, the mission took in 6.5 people a day and housed an average of
20.5 a day in June, according to records it submitted to the county and
state. New admissions were 6 and 6.4 per day for July and August,
respectively, and the average occupancy was 17.1 and 18.8 a day for those
two months. Admissions ranged up to 11 a day during those months, and
occupancy was as high as 27 a day.

Many of those people were clearly coming back several times, said Kristin
Riley, the county's deputy commissioner of mental health. She said 56
percent of the people who slept there spent a day or less in the building.
That makes it difficult to calculate the total number of people using the
service.

"You've got a lot of short-term movement in and out of the program," she
said.

Closing the Rescue Mission's detoxification center eliminated 12 full-time
and three part-time jobs. Among the full-time workers, three have accepted
other mission jobs, three have turned down such work, two retired and one
took a job elsewhere, according to the mission.

Brownell saidthe mission's failure to move a greater number of patients on
to alcohol-and-drug rehabilitation programs licensed by the state played a
part in the county's decision to offer the program to other providers. The
county is also seeking to add medical services to detoxification that the
mission said it cannot handle.

Syracuse Behavioral Healthcare won the contract, but, Brownell said money
wasn't available to advance to the nonprofit for startup costs. So SBH is
being paid contract dollars for two months to get up and running though it
is not taking in patients.

Brownell said the decision was made to shut down the service in July and
August because of a lower demand in those months for such services.

"I know it doesn't sound terrific, but it's the reality," he said.

Parker said he has been pressing the county without much success to explain
where the intoxicated people he used to serve should go now.

Brownell said he has alerted emergency rooms and shelters to the possible
influx of intoxicated people and asked them to stretch their rules for a
while.

Linda Wright, executive director of Syracuse Area Salvation Army, said the
women's shelter has already had to find a place for an intoxicated woman to
sleep because she couldn't be housed with other women.

"How are we going to manage that? I don't know," she said.

Among those concerned about housing intoxicated people for the next two
months is Syracuse Behavioral Healthcare, which will eventually run the
program.

Rick Kinsella, its executive director, said his agency relied on the Rescue
Mission's 30 beds.

"Are providersconcerned about what they're going to do in the next two
months? Yeah," he said. "We are one of those providers."

Catholic Charities' shelters have not seen a surge of people who might
otherwise be in detoxification, said Brian Walton, executive director in
Onondaga County.

Unlike most shelters, Walton said his operations will accept intoxicated
homeless people if they are not disruptive.

Parker said he expects the absence of a detoxification center will create a
demand for more beds at his shelter. He said he's adding 40 beds to the 67
he now has that are filled most days.

But the Rescue Mission is prevented by law from providing detoxification
services.

"We're still going to help people with substance-abuse problems. It just
won't be licensed," Parker said.