ABYSS AWAITS YOUNG AS TEEN DRUG REHAB CLOSES

CHILDREN with drug and alcohol addictions will "slip through the net"
when the state's only residential rehabilitation program for young
teenagers closes this month because of a lack of funds.

The state-appointed child safety commissioner has called on the
Government to help save the program, in Melbourne's east, after
donations dried up amid the global financial crisis and outpouring of
aid to bushfire victims.

Commissioner Bernie Geary, who advises the Government on the safety
and wellbeing of children, said that unless the Government responded
to the need of the Tandana Place program for 12 to 20-year-olds,
vulnerable young people would "slip through the net". "They are the
young people we find in prisons and abject and long-term
homelessness," he said. "It has a ripple effect, it affects broader
families. The community needs places like Tandana and it's in all our
interests that it continues.

"The Government needs to be responding. It needs to have a look at
what they (Tandana) are doing and understand they fill a niche that
would otherwise not be filled."

Children as young as 13, many of them in state care, have sought help
for addiction and mental health issues through the eight-to-16-week
program, run by Waverley Emergency Adolescent Care.

The program has been a place of refuge for more than 220 young
Victorians over the past decade, about half of whom first tasted
alcohol or drugs at 12 or 13.

Program chief executive Maureen Buck said the post-detox residential
facility, at Mount Waverley, would be forced to close on June 30,
after the Government declined to fill a $100,000 shortfall in donations.

"Donations from January to now are something like $23,000, whereas
this time last year we were close to our budget of $200,000," she
said. "The State Government has to be really mindful of the duty of
care, of what they're doing to the younger-age kids who for whatever
reason are substance abusing -- whether it's family breakdown,
physical abuse or sexual abuse."

Ms Buck said 28 teens aged between 13 and 15 were among those who had
received family therapy and meditation, job education and training,
and harm minimisation strategies.

"What's going to happen to these kids? We've got about seven referrals
sitting there waiting to come into the program and we've had to tell
them we're shutting the doors. Some of these kids have started using
alcohol when they're five or six. It's pretty devastating."

Separate foster care services would not be affected, she
said.

The Department of Human Services provides about $87,000 a year to
Tandana for referrals through the juvenile justice system. But it
won't give the extra money to keep the program afloat. DHS spokesman
Paul Heinrichs said: "The Government takes the view that this service
can be provided and is being provided elsewhere."

After being contacted by The Sunday Age on Friday, the department
sought a transfer for a current Tandana resident to Birribi, a
residential rehabilitation program for older teens run by the Youth
Substance Abuse Service.

The program, which caters for up to 15 young people at a time, is
pitched at 16 to 20-year-olds.

"The view of the department is that there is a fairly low demand for
this age group (12 to 16) in residential rehab and what demand there
is can be met elsewhere in services that are underutilised," Mr
Heinrichs said.

But Youth Substance Abuse Service executive director David Murray said
young people could expect to wait between four and six weeks to enter
Birribi. Closure of Tandana would increase pressure on the system, he
said.