ADDICTS MISSING OUT ON TREATMENT

The number of Port Alberni clients being sent to a nearby drug and
alcohol addictions clinic has dropped to zero, sparking concerns that
funding has been chopped in a city where it's needed most.

For Jane Worth, administrator at the Comox Valley Recovery Centre,
the sudden drop in clients, from an average of 20 annually, is
strange. She wants to know what's happening to them.

The recovery centre isn't the only facility offering live-in
addictions treatment on Vancouver Island, but it has been the
facility used by Port Alberni clients for that specific treatment for
as long as three decades.

Now the Port Alberni branch of B.C. Mental Health and Addiction
Services, under the Vancouver Island Health Authority, has ceased
sending clients to Comox. Worth said it's because its budget for
residential care has been cut.

"We are getting clients from other mental health and addiction
offices, and they seem to still have a residential care budget,"
Worth said. "It just seems to me to be an injustice to the clients
served in Port Alberni."

Worth is so frustrated that she approached Alberni Pacific Rim MLA
Scott Fraser, who sent a letter of complaint to the health minister.

"At the beginning of VIHA's 2009 budget year they eliminated the
residential support budget for Port Alberni," Fraser said.

"This is for people who need drug and alcohol rehabilitation."

What that means for local addicts, and whether it leaves them walking
the streets, is unclear for Worth and Fraser. But Janet James,
manager of Mental Health and Addictions for Oceanside, Port Alberni
and the West Coast, was very clear that there was no funding cut for
residential care by VIHA, and there will be no increase of addicts
unable to find care. Instead, she said VIHA has changed its
assessment techniques and refined them to better match client needs
with available services.

"The fact there's a treatment program on your door step doesn't mean
it would be the one that would meet your needs," James said. "It's
about doing a really good and detailed formal assessment of the
individual's full needs and problems and working out what's going to
be the best package of care."

The new assessment techniques mean that clients that were
historically sent to Comox to overcome their addictions are now being
sent to other facilities that deal with addictions as well as
accompanying mental illnesses. That includes two beds at Port House
and three more at Garnett House in Port Alberni. Both are residential
facilities where Mental Health and Addictions can support a client
through a period of stabilization and support to set them up for
independent living in the community, James said.

Neither Worth nor Fraser are convinced. They say that Mental Health
and Addictions has been sending Port Alberni clients to appropriate
facilities for years and this is nothing new or different. What has
changed is that the agency is no longer sending clients to nearby
addictions-specific facilities where they're housed throughout their
treatments.

"The money we're talking about is $12.40 per day," Worth said. "It's
not like it's a gazillion dollars. It's not like we charge $10,000 to $15,000."

Fraser said attempts to rationalize making clients travel further to
VIHA-supported facilities that offer similar services to those in
Comox are misguided.

"It's been determined that Port Alberni exceeds Qualicum and
Parksville in spending for this budget," Fraser said. "So they've
chosen not to fund it, which is ridiculous. Port Alberni is a
different community than Parksville/Qualicum. We've see a lot of
socio-economic problems in Port Alberni and therefore statistically
the needs are greater. If the needs are greater, you don't shut them
down. They're doing exactly the wrong thing."