FEW DETOX BEDS HERE FOR YOUTH

Second in a series.

Some nights are just a "gong show."

That's what Melanie Sheard, a Surrey Reconnect youth outreach worker, calls
it when her outreach shift is eaten up trying to juggle multiple kids with
crises.

One such evening in late January saw Sheard fielding countless calls from
two young runaway girls in different parts of the city. Sheard was asked by
one of the girls, who just had a "massive fight with her parents," to meet
her and her boyfriend at a fast-food restaurant to talk about their options
and choices. In the end, the girl decided to stay with her boyfriend and
sleep in parks or building doorways.

"It's not that there are more girls who run away but we hear about more of
them," said Sheard. "Generally females ask for help more than males do.
Females talk more than males do."

The other runaway's situation couldn't be sorted out by the end of Sheard's
shift.

"At 11 (o'clock), you just have to turn the phone off and try not to think
about it," she said.

Sheard, whose caseload has been almost exclusively young girls in her
year-and-a-half with Surrey Reconnect, said that there is a huge range of
issues particular to dealing with girls, runaways or not. Because of this,
girls will almost always ask to have a female youth worker.

Some males do have body image issues, she said, "but how many guys have had
a fat day?" Sheard said body control issues are another major concern for
young girls.

"If you can't control anything else in your life, you can control what you
do to your body, what you put into your body, or not put into your body,"
she said. "That's when it gets really tough."

Also an issue is young girls - 13 or 14 years old - with much older
boyfriends, Sheard says. Some of these girls have boyfriends who are 26 or
30, said Sheard, and then you have to explain that their boyfriend isn't
looking for a meaningful relationship, he's a pedophile.

Many girls, like boys, also have addictions they're grappling with, and the
lack of youth detox beds in the city is a real problem in trying to get
help for these kids. "They never get in," said Sheard. "There's always a
waitlist. By the time there's a spot open they've already gone on another
binge."

Shayne Williams, another youth outreach worker, agreed, saying he recently
spent two weeks trying to get a spot for one of his clients but ultimately
the teen didn't get into one of Maple Cottage's three youth detox beds
before he slipped back into using. Maple Cottage has the only youth detox
beds in the Fraser Health Authority.

In addition, there is a desperate need for safe houses for youth in Surrey.

As it stands, if a kid is kicked out of home, is already on the streets or
has nowhere else to go and turns to a youth worker for help, the nearest
safe house is in the Downtown Eastside.

Williams wonders if they're really doing the child a service sending them
to Covenant House, which also takes street people in their 20s.

"We wouldn't refer someone there unless they're really street entrenched
and can handle themselves. They don't even have friends to fall back on
there," said Williams.

The next morning, the kids are stranded downtown at risk of getting into an
even worse predicament.

Instead, Surrey's Reconnect workers try to get kids into a safe house in
North Vancouver, their only other real option.

"For the most part, they won't go," said Sheard. If the kids are in a
school work program, for example, she said they don't want to go because
it's too far from Surrey.

And sometimes, that isn't even an option: the North Van safe house doesn't
always have space to spare.

"Surrey should have its own safe house," said Williams. "Because of the
number of kids we deal with, we could keep a house full."