YOUTH ADDICTION SERVICES SOON UP FOR TENDER

Castlegar's youth addiction service Freedom Quest is sourcing-out a new
contract as its current agreement with Interior Health ends March 2005.

"It's definitely a big question right now. We're all laid off at the end of
March," said Tammy Verigen-Burk, Freedom Quest program director. She added
their programs will be going up for tender and there are several interested
bidders, but nothing has been confirmed yet.

IH has put the organization out for tender because they felt youth services
weren't an appropriate fit. IH, however, does hope to keep the staff and
programs intact, Verigen-Burk said, but that will depend on who gets the
contract.

The hope is to have a buyer for the spring to keep up with the significant
community demand.

"Our numbers are huge - we often have anywhere between 15 and up for our
Monday group. For our Tuesday group it's definitely between 10 and 20 youth
who come to that," she said. "All of us are completely full to capacity in
all our programs, so most people have wait lists."

Freedom Quest and its community affiliates offer youth addictions services
in the Kootenays under two separate but complimentary programs.

Their youth drug and alcohol program is a six week long intensive program
geared for heavy users and caters to youth throughout the West Kootenays.
Services are mobile and retreats are often incorporated into the curriculum.

"The retreats have been really successful because the youth are actually
clean for three solid days," Verigen-Burk said. All programs are voluntary
meaning no one can be forced to join. "The youth have to want to come."

Verigen-Burk added that Freedom Quest has branched out incorporating their
lessons and expertise into local high schools. Programs were conducted at
Mt. Sentinel School in the hope they can reach youth before they start using.

"Rather than just having youth who are heavy users we had the whole
classroom involved," Verigen-Burk said.

The school programs consist of five, two-and-a-half hour sessions. "We want
to do more high school programs but because we're finishing up at the end
of March they're still up in the air," she said. If subsequent funding
comes through, Freedom Quest is exploring other School District No. 20
schools, including J.L. Crowe, for year-long pilot projects.

In addition the organization runs the Youth Substance Abuse Management
Program. YSAM focuses on youth on probation or otherwise involved in the
justice program. Verigen-Burk said the goal is to help youth draw
correlations between crime and substance abuse - a common occurrence in the
community.

"We're really seeing an increase in drug and alcohol use in the area. The
most concerning trend is there's a lot more youth going into the heavier
drugs," she said. Marijuana isn't the "gateway" drug it once was - there's
been a shift whereby youth are going straight to harder drugs, for example
crystal meth. Drugs like meth are dangerous because symptoms of use are
harder for parents to detect.

"It's really easy for them to coast along under their parents radar and
crack and crystal meth are very big around the area," Verigen-Burk noted.