DRUG REHAB TECHNICALITY ADDS TO PAIN

Susan and Sheila are mother and daughter. They live in a tidy house
on a quiet street in a leafy part of town. Those are not their real
names because everyone deserves a second chance.

Sheila is 18 years old, athletic, obsessive, articulate, intelligent.
She got caught up in drugs. She is now in treatment in another province.

Susan is a good parent, sore of heart, baffled that she never saw it
coming. She poured coffee in her living room the other day and said,
"Sheila was a great student. Her marks were always in the 80s. She
got a scholarship out of high school. I don't know how it got
started. It turns out she was using for five years; alcohol,
marijuana, ecstasy." There were other drugs.

"She hid it from us. She hid it from her friends. She was arrested
for marijuana possession just short of her 18th birthday. I didn't
know it then, but she'd been seeing a counsellor." Yes, in the best
of families.

After she was busted, Sheila was to enter a treatment centre in
Ontario, but there was a delay of a couple of months. It seems beds
for girls with drug problems are at a premium in this province.

Sheila became suicidal.

Susan said, "Her counsellor got her into detox. She stayed a week.
She was supposed to come home, but she went on a spree and ended up
in Mississauga, in the middle of nowhere." More to that story but you
don't need to know it. Sheila eventually got into treatment, but she
ran away and was arrested; again, don't ask.

Susan said, "They took her back at the treatment centre. The other
kids wrote her notes of welcome. She'd come home now and then for
overnights, but when she came home for good, we could see that she
was sliding. She was moody. She was silent. Her counsellor found out
she was planning to overdose on morphine."

Sheila was eventually sent to a similar treatment facility in New
Brunswick, this one designed for older kids. Susan said, softly,
"Within two weeks of her arrival, she was found in the bath with a
blade and a three-page suicide note." There, but for fortune. "She
has been away for 2 1/2 months."

What is the price of a second chance? Susan opened a binder thick
with notes, letters, receipts; the whole story. "We're paying $5,000 a month."

No help from OHIP.

Why not?

Because the centre in New Brunswick isn't covered, and there's no
place for her here. Susan calculates that, including treatment fees,
travel and other related costs, her daughter's care has cost over
$100,000 so far.

All of it out of pocket.

Family income? "We're not working." Her husband is retired, "and I'm
on disability but it hasn't kicked in yet. The stress of the last
year has taken its toll."

Susan is better equipped than most of us to handle the situation. She
is a senior health care professional, she knows the system, she has
some modest savings. But here's what she can't understand:

"If we'd sent her to a facility in the U.S., where treatment costs
$500 a day, OHIP probably would have covered it. Or if she'd been
sent into drug treatment by the courts, the government would have paid."

Susan applied for help, but she was turned down and was told there
was no way to appeal. She has no choice. She loves her daughter. She
raids her savings.

Sheila's lucky.

But what about those kids who can't get help because their parents
have no resources? The rescue of our children ought not to depend on luck.