DRUG-TREATMENT CENTRE FOR TEENS SET TO CLOSE

Private Facility Was Too Costly To Fund, Minister Maintains

A private live-in treatment centre for teenage girls with severe drug and
alcohol addictions will fold at the end of this month.

The impending closure of Campbell Valley Women's Centre in Langley comes
just months after a coroner's jury analyzing the overdose death of a young
Abbotsford woman cried out for more treatment programs.

Dr. Carl Stroh, who started the 15-bed private centre, says government
cutbacks have made it impossible for him to keep operating.

"We have tried for three years to get the provincial government to make a
commitment to funding a program for young women," Stroh said.

But the money has only ever been doled out in dribs and drabs for "a few
beds here and a few beds there." On March 31, it runs out, he said.

One of the last two clients at the centre, who spoke on the condition she
not be identified, said the intense program is helping her face a serious
alcohol addiction that started when she was 13.

What began as weekend partying escalated to daily binges when her parents
divorced, the 17-year-old North Vancouver girl said.

She tried many times to stop drinking on her own.

"But I was not successful. The weekend would come and my friends would say,
'Come on, let's go party.'"

The centre eased her into Alcoholic's Anonymous meetings, which she plans
to continue when the program ends.

For the past three years, the provincial government has directed some
federal money to pay for a handful of beds for young offenders referred to
the centre through the courts.

Other paying clients included the Alberta government, which has no
equivalent treatment centre, Indian bands and occasionally, a wealthy family.

However, at $21,000 for a 12-week program, the cost is prohibitive. Stroh
said the government seems unwilling to acknowledge how serious cocaine and
heroin addictions can be.

"It's what we call denial in the treatment field," he said.

The Minister of Children and Family Development said he was surprised by
Stroh's comments.

Gordon Hogg said Stroh initially intended to operate the centre privately
and did not request provincial funding.

"He wrote to the ministry a number of years ago, he said he was not looking
for global funding," he said. "That was back in February of 1999."

Over the years, the province paid for treatment for a handful of young
offenders at Campbell Valley, but Stroh was well aware the arrangement was
temporary, Hogg said.

The government felt a "broader-based" and less expensive program was
needed. So a few years ago, the province put out a proposal for a seven-bed
residential treatment centre in the Surrey area. "Stroh did not bid on
that," Hogg said.

Hogg admitted there is probably a need for more treatment beds.

In January, a coroner's jury examining the death of Christena Constible,
20, highlighted the dismal lack of addiction treatment services for youth.

The jury called for short- and long-term residential detox centres and an
adolescent centre at the regional hospital and more psychiatric programs
for youth in the region.

Experts in the field say the closure of Campbell Valley is extremely
ill-timed. People need look no further than the investigation into the 50
missing women from the Downtown Eastside to see the results of untreated
drug addictions, said John Turvey, who runs the Downtown Eastside Youth
Activities Society and the needle exchange.