COUNTY HOPES SCREENING CAN CUT DRUG TREATMENT FUNDS

Milwaukee County hopes to avoid paying for drug and alcohol treatment
provided to W-2 participants and parents in the child welfare program
through a new screening program, officials said Wednesday.

Referring those residents directly to their private W-2 and child
welfare agencies will be part of the county's effort to slash costs in
its drug and alcohol treatment program, which ran nearly $3.4 million
over budget in 1998.

The county allocated more than $7.5 million last year to provide
assessment, counseling and other services for poor, uninsured addicts
and alcoholics. With a similar amount budgeted in 1999, county
officials have had to cut services to avoid another large deficit.

Part of the penny-pinching will include checking to see if people who
receive drug and alcohol treatment paid for by the county have access
to those services through other agencies, either the private W-2 or
child welfare agencies.

"The county will not be responsible for those clients," Department of
Human Services Director Ralph Hollmon said. "The county will only pay
for people who have no other resources."

In essence, the county hopes to become the treatment provider of last
resort, rather than the provider of first resort.

Residents seeking services through the county central intake unit will
be screened starting next month to determine if they participate in
W-2 or child welfare programs. Participants will be referred to those
agencies directly, according to a memo released by Hollmon.

How much that effort will save the county has not been determined, and
it will not stave off the other, more severe, service cuts proposed in
the 1999 budget.

Those cuts include 186 slots in the methadone treatment program and 56
beds in residential treatment. Those reductions will be implemented
shortly under the plan Hollmon presented to the committee.

He and other county officials had hoped to avoid the reductions by
finding additional money to help people with no other alternatives for
drug and alcohol treatment.

"In spite of our best effort and hard work, the money just isn't
there," Hollmon told the County Board Committee on Health and Human
Needs. "The reductions outlined here are very real and very painful."

Advocates striving to help poor addicts in the county protested the
reductions at the committee meeting, as they have done in the several
months since the 1999 county budget was proposed. Their voices,
however, have not been enough to stop the cutbacks.

Hardest hit, the advocates say, will be the voucher program, which
pays for basic services, including counseling and residential treatment.

The 1997 county budget included nearly $5.3 million for treatment
services through the voucher program. In 1999, about half that amount
will be available.

"It's certainly not good for us," said Sam Marjanov, executive
director of the Matt Talbot Recovery Center at 2613 W. North Ave.

The center provides treatment to men with histories of substance abuse
problems. With the county reducing the money available for treatment,
the center and others will have fewer clients and less revenue.

"We're certainly at risk of possibly closing the agency," Marjanov
said. "Some of the smaller agencies that serve all of these
populations are definitely at risk of extinction because of the
smaller pool of funds."

Supervisor Roger Quindel, who chairs the County Board committee, said
he hoped other agencies would help fill the void in the drug treatment
services in Milwaukee County. Those would include the W-2 agencies
that receive state funding to provide the services, and the child
welfare agencies, which also receive drug treatment money from the
state.

"Those sources all should really help the county system," Quindel
said. "If all these people do what they've said they would, that would
go a long way to solving the problem."

Quindel said, however, that he was not confident that the gaps would
be filled. His colleague, Supervisor James White, made a similar assessment.

"The only thing that winds up definite is the cuts," White said. "Once
the cuts are made, the alternatives become fuzzier and fuzzier and
fuzzier."