NO REST FOR FOUNDER OF LIFE EDUCATION TRUST

After a good party, most people just want to go to
bed.

Not so for Life Education Trust founder Trevor Grice, who sat with a
Dunedin family through the small hours of Saturday morning trying to
help a young family member, a drug-addict and repeat offender.

Mr Grice was in Dunedin at the weekend for a trust charity dinner on
Friday and the Southern Family Court conference on Saturday and yesterday.

He is the director of Hanmer's Queen Mary Hospital, which treats
people with drug and alcohol addictions.

On Saturday, the weary Wellington-based addiction counsellor, sporting
dark rings under his eyes, said he always responded to parents in a
crisis.

"I work a lot with families. I get hundreds of calls from families in
a state," he said.

The calls have increased since an article about his work in a recent
North and South magazine, he said.

It also reflected a groundswell of parental concern about drugs and
crime.

"People have had a gutsful of burglaries, violence, rapes," he
said.

The Dunedin family who contacted him on Friday after the charity
dinner would remain anonymous, he said.

He would speak to them again next week and help devise a
detoxification programme for the young person.

Mr Grice said the young person had never undergone detoxification,
although he was sure the penal system and social agencies had tried to
help in the past.

A Dunedin network of social agencies would also work on the programme
and Mr Grice was adamant the young person could be turned around.

The Life Education Trust is to open an outpatient addiction treatment
centre in Dunedin next year.

Centres already operate in Wellington, Auckland, Tauranga and
Christchurch.

The trust has raised $23 million over 11 years and, unsupported by the
Government, provides mobile classrooms to teach drug education.

Mr Grice was awarded a United Nations peace award two weeks ago for
his youth and addiction work.

His vision is big - "but I think it will be a quick reality" - to give
drug education resources to school entrants right through to the adult
world.

In the past, he saw drug addiction change young people's behaviour
over several years, but now they were changing in just six months, he
said.

Mr Grice made it to the 9am start of the Southern Family Courts
conference on Saturday. His presentation in the afternoon focused on
the brain and "how habits are put in the tapestry of the brain".

He co-authored with Tom Scott the 1997 book The Great Brain Robbery.
Dunedin District Court judge David Saunders this month asked an
18-year-old youth to copy a chapter from the book before he would
consider a discharge without conviction for possessing cannabis and a
pipe.