CITY TO 'BILL' IHA FOR ADDICTION COSTS

City Council wants Williams Lake to have a detox centre and plans to
bill Interior Health for RCMP costs associated with dealing with drug
and alcohol addicted individuals until the health authority deals
with the issue.

On Tuesday night, city council agreed to bill Interior Health, after
having had no success in the past year trying to convince it to
provide a detox centre. Members of City Council expressed their
frustration that the health authority hasn't provided a centre,
which, according to the City, the Central Cariboo Joint Committee,
and some First Nations communities have expressed interest in having.

The City says that RCMP records show there were 1,256 reported cases
of public intoxication from July 2007 to July 2008 (more than three a
day) and an average of 800 arrests a year due to the problem.

Mayor Scott Nelson said that equates to $150,000 a year that could be
spent on dealing with other issues in the city.

"What we know is that it's costing our community $150,000 to provide
a service that we feel Interior Health should be providing," Nelson
said, adding that putting the health authority on notice is to raise
awareness on a worsening situation. "The community is paying for
this, and we need these services to be effective to ensure that these
services will look after the people that need help."

Council will write a letter to Interior Health, explaining that it
will be billed on an annually, per-call basis until it provides a
detox centre and/or demonstrates a significant reduction in the RCMP
resources used to deal with the issue.

Nelson said the City has offered to work with and partner with
Interior Health on the issue, but has had no success.

Coun. Jon Wolbers said that while he supports the idea of having a
detox centre in the city, he noted that making upgrades to Cariboo
Memorial Hospital's second floor has been a priority.

"Is it going to be a detox centre and put funds into that or is it
going to be the second floor?" Wolbers said, adding that 30 per cent
of Interior Health's budget is spent on addiction issues.

"These are people that are in a very traumatic state, so it's not a
cheap program. That doesn't mean it's not an essential and good
program," he said, adding that a detox centre would also need to be
staffed with professionals, such as psychiatric doctors and nurses.
"I agree, a detox centre, we need one. I was just wondering what our
priority was."

Coun. Surinderpal Rathor said the hospital is important, but so is
having a detox centre.

"Do we need a hospital or do we need a detox centre? We need both,"
Rathor said. "The stats show we need a hospital. Stats show we need a
detox centre. Stats show we need more police officers. . I'm not
backing off. We need a detox centre."

Coun. Ed Mead said he supports the motion to put Interior Health on
notice, as he has heard from a number of people and organizations in
the community that has expressed the need for a detox centre.

"It's about time, as far as I'm concerned, about something like this.
I am 100 per cent behind this and I think we should send the letter
off tomorrow," Mead said. "Shipping these people away from their
community for treatment doesn't work. They need a local detox centre
where they can be treated in familiar surroundings with community support."

"Frankly, I was really surprised by the position taken by city
council," says Carol Savage, director of addiction and residential
services for Interior Health in an interview with the Tribune.

She says city council raised the issue more than a year ago, and
Interior Health responded by meeting with the City's health advisory
committee, community members and aboriginal communities about the
concerns to figure out what else could be done.

"We've done quite a lot of work up there, certainly not everything,
but we've certainly done a lot of work," she says, adding that there
are lingering perceptions and confusion as to who is responsible for
the problems.

"We are actually not responsible for providing shelter for people who
are impaired or intoxicated on the streets," she said. "We certainly
are responsible and want to provide addiction treatment if people
choose addiction treatment."

She says there are some social problems that are visible on the
street, but Interior Health would like to attack some of those social
issues at the root.

She says the Inter-Ministry Funders group that the City pulled
together with Interior Health last year is made up of the Ministry of
Children and Family Development, Community Corrections, the Ministry
of Housing and Social Development, Mental Health and Addictions, the
City, and the Ministry of Income Assistance.

The group, which has been looking at the unmet needs in the
community, hasn't identified detox as a top issue, but is troubled by
the number of people with substance abuse problems.

"We also are. Substance abuse and addiction are problems that are
shared in the community, among families and among agencies."

She says one of the key items needed in the city is a safe, overnight
shelter, rather than a stand-alone detox centre, since there are
people who don't want to receive withdrawal treatment, but could use
a safe place to sleep overnight. She says that suggestion was offered
to the City's health advisory committee last year.

"The folks there seemed to think that was the biggest thing, not to
bring someone to police cells or to emergency at the hospital, when
really what they needed was safe shelter overnight or for the next
six hours until they slept it off," she says. "That's not a treatment
program. That's a shelter program."

Interior Health, she says, wants to make sure people have access to
withdrawal management services in Williams Lake and throughout the
region. She says Williams Lake has the Gateway Crisis Stabilization
Unit, which is located in the hospital. It has five beds for people
who are in immediate need of supports.

"They (the beds) are not always full," she says, noting that since
they have had the capacity to do withdrawal management in the last
year, they are being used more. "It's not a situation where there are
not enough beds. We've got vacant beds at any given time."

People can also use the stand-alone, 20 bed Phoenix Centre in
Kamloops, where people usually stay for about one week. There,
patients go through the physical effects of withdrawal, before the
psycho-social treatment begins.

Patients may then go to the outpatient clinic at the Mental Health
and Addictions Centre in WIlliams Lake to be assessed. If someone
needs ongoing residential care, staff then begin the referrals.

There is also a youth mobile treatment program to help youth with
addiction issues.

At the Gateway Crisis Stabilization Unit, nurses are on site, and
staff screen patients and are familiar with acute treatment. If
someone is assessed as being a complex withdrawal patient, they can
be referred to Kamloops, but more and more are assisted in Williams Lake.

"A very high percentage of people who quit alcohol or drugs do it
completely on their own," she says, adding that people who receive
detox do so on a voluntary basis.

"We can't scoop people up and hold them in a residential program if
they haven't indicated some willingness to participate in that
program with withdrawal management."