TREATMENT REDUCED FOR TEENS STRUGGLING WITH DRUGS

They've been living on wishful thinking for three years over at Campbell
Valley Treatment Centre, but there's no point anymore. The last of the
funding is gone and the drug-treatment centre is closing.

With it go 15 precious treatment beds for B.C. teenagers -- girls, in this
case. There's still the nine-bed Exodus program the Salvation Army runs for
boys and maybe another 20 co-ed treatment beds scattered around the province.

But the wait for drug-addicted teenagers anywhere in B.C. is already five
months long, and it can only get longer now that Campbell Valley is
shutting down.

The Langley centre was the dream of Dr. Carl Stroh, who once oversaw B.C.
addiction services in a previous incarnation as treatment director for the
province's Alcohol and Drug Commission. He set up shop in 1999 in a defunct
youth camp owned by the province, fixing the place up with private money.
Offering an eight-week residential program for girls 13 to 19, Stroh was
certain the government would eventually fund him once they saw that it worked.

And there has been funding off and on since then, sometimes for all 15
beds. But only four have been funded in the past year and that contract --
$400,000 annually -- runs out at the end of the month. Stroh can't afford
to keep the doors open without it.

The government came around just 15 years ago to the idea that adolescents
occasionally need live-in care to get over their addictions, and has inched
forward ever so slowly in the years since (although faster than other
provinces).

Peak House, the pioneer residential treatment centre located in Vancouver,
has eight beds. Another dozen beds have opened elsewhere in the province in
the past couple of years -- none on the Island -- and there is a handful
more for aboriginal youth.

It's a problem. Fifty or more B.C. youths are waiting for a rehab placement
at any given time. They give up drugs in order to qualify for a treatment
bed, but many of them fall away by the time a bed comes available.

"There's a desperate need for more treatment," says Peak House executive
director Bill Hansen. "There are 100-plus outpatient treatment centres for
adolescents in B.C. and they do a great job. But sometimes the kids need
more. And it just isn't out there."

B.C. medical health officer Dr. Perry Kendall says the closure of Campbell
Valley need not be cause for alarm as long as teenagers get support in the
community for their addictions. But addiction services were offloaded on to
the province's cash-strapped and struggling health regions as of last
month, and the programs aren't likely to see more money any time soon.

Teenage girls have complex needs, says Stroh. Most of Campbell Valley's
past clients had histories of sexual abuse. Some were pregnant or worked in
the sex trade. Others had eating disorders, mental illness, criminal
behaviour. They did well in Campbell Valley's "home-like" setting.

An inquest earlier this year into the drug-overdose death of Abbotsford
woman Christena Constible stressed the need for more residential treatment
for adolescents.

But the government says it's largely meeting needs with existing services,
including Vancouver's recently opened five-bed Daughters and Sisters
treatment centre for women. Contracting with Campbell Valley was never more
than a temporary measure until other beds were established elsewhere, a
government spokeswoman said Thursday.

Stroh will now give up his $60,000 site lease and the provincially owned
property will return to sitting empty, as it did for seven years before he
moved in.

The site is under a covenant that restricts its use to youth programs, so
it could well sit empty again for some time.

Langley-Abbotsford MP Randy White, vice-chairman of the parliamentary
committee on drugs, is flummoxed and furious at the collapse of the centre
in his riding.

Leaving Campbell Valley to fade away is "amazingly stupid" and a black mark
against all levels of government for letting it happen.

"I'd rate that centre as one of the top three in the country," says White.

"And there it is, sitting idle. You look at that place and think, 'Who are
the fools who don't understand that there are young kids who could be fixed
here?' "