WORK BEGINS ON $1.3M DRUG-TREATMENT FACILITY FOR FRANCOPHONE TEENS

Construction has begun on a $1.3-million residential drug-treatment
centre for French-speaking teens.

The Maison Fraternite is part of a long-awaited expansion of
addiction treatment services for youth that builds on existing day
programs, school-based prevention programs and a burgeoning
residential treatment program for English-speaking teens.

The five-bed facility on Olmstead Street in Vanier is aimed at
francophones aged 12 to 17. It is expected to accept its first clients by May.

Meanwhile, work is also under way to bring three existing drug
treatment programs for anglo-phone teens under one roof.

Currently, the Dave Smith Youth Treatment Centre spends $3.3 million
a year to run programs out of locations in Carleton Place, West
Carleton and Ottawa, creating "oeall sorts of drains on
resources," said Glenn Barnes, the centre's executive director.

By July 2014, the centre aims to consolidate all of its operations at
the West Carleton site on 137 acres on Bradley Side Road.

As part of the consolidation, the centre's residential treatment
program would be expanded to 30 beds from the existing 24.

The centre is working with the United Way to raise $2.5 million to
build a bigger facility in West Carleton.

Since 2010, when the Dave Smith centre was first created out of two
amalgamated organizations, the residential program has treated 198
youths, with another 29 teens waiting to be admitted.

In the Ottawa area, 385 young people between the ages of 13 and 21
have complex addictions and mental illnesses that require residential
treatment, Barnes estimated.

In recent years, the demand for addictions treatment has been fuelled
by a sharp rise in the recreational use of prescription painkillers
among this region's teens.

A recent survey showed one in five Eastern Ontario high school
students has taken highly addictive painkillers such as Oxycontin,
Percocet and Demerol.

Only alcohol and marijuana are more popular, according to the Ontario
Student Drug Use and Health Survey, the country's longest ongoing
study of teen habits.

Among Eastern Ontario's 308,000 students between grades 7 and 12,
nearly 65,000, or 21 per cent, admitted having taken a prescription
painkiller at least once in 2009, the last time the survey was conducted.