ISLAND COUNTY TAKES ON DRUG, ALCOHOL TREATMENT PROGRAM

Island County is going into the business of treating people with
substance abuse problems.

Jackie Henderson, the director of the county's Department of Human
Services, recently received the blessing of all three county
commissioners to move ahead with starting a new treatment program for
people with drug or alcohol addiction.

"It's a choice of going in this direction or not having a publicly
funded treatment program on the island," she said.

Normally, counties contract with nonprofit groups or businesses to
provide the drug-and-alcohol treatment services to the community. The
counties enter into two-year contracts with the state Department of
Social and Health Services; the county provides the treatment program
and the state provides the cash.

But this year, the county received no responses from a request for
proposal for the treatment program. With continued cuts in state
funding year after year, Henderson said, many "small non-profits and
for-profits" can no longer afford to provide the service.

"They are being nickled and dimed to death," she said.

Henderson said the county should receive between $800,000 and $900,000
for the next two-year program, while the state used to provide more
than $1 million a year. No county money will be used to fund the program.

The choice, Henderson explained, was to either forego the funding and
provide no treatment program in the county -- which means most people
would have to travel to neighboring counties -- or create a new county
program. She said there's currently only one, part-time treatment
provider in the county.

Many other counties, especially the smaller ones, have already started
county-run substance abuse programs because officials can no longer
find businesses or organizations willing to contract, she said.

According to Henderson, the county's substance abuse treatment is
offered on a sliding scale based on a person's income. Some of the
people in the program are court ordered to get help, while most seek
help on their own.

Henderson said she believes her office will be able to provide a
treatment program, while a private entity cannot, because the county
already has the administrative infrastructure in place.

"Whether we will be able to pull it off in the long run, I don't
know," she said.

Seven new county employees will be hired to run the program. They will
include a program manager, four chemical dependency professionals, an
administrative assistant and a reception / data entry person. The
therapy will be provided at the location -- behind Seabolts on Highway
20 in Oak Harbor -- that the current provider, Phoenix Recovery,
operates from.