NEW FACILITY AT TREATMENT CENTRE

Three women singing the Warrior Song began Friday's opening celebrations
for a new facility at the Nenqayni Treatment Centre.

The Youth and Family Inhalant Program now has its own home on the Deep
Creek Reserve. There are rooms for 10 girls, but according to cultural
leader and counsellor Phillip Johnson, they can squeeze in 12.

The federally-funded project has been in the works for over a year and
construction to the building was completed in August. That month commenced
the first six-month program in the new building and so far, it's operating
at capacity.

The clients are girls whose ages range from 10 to 16 years old from around
the province who are suffering from addictions to cocaine, alcohol,
inhalants, and/or involvement in prostitution, and they look like any other
teenage girls dressed in low-slung jeans, fitted hoodies, and hoop earrings
which rest on their shoulders.

The centre's clinical director, Ralph Wright, says the new facility should
be a model for other facilities in the future.

"This is the way to do it," says Wright. "It's intensive work so it's good
to have the small groups so people don't get lost. In a perfect world -
this is the model."

Natural light floods the building from the windows which face the old ski
hill. There is a fireplace in the common room, a kitchen from which the
youth fix their own meals, one classroom outfitted with computers, a
private counselling room, and a group therapy room.

Families come for one month of the six-month treatment and stay on the
property.

"We're dealing with the whole family dynamic," says Wright. "The client
lives in the family system.

"There is this analogy: we pull the client out of the river, we treat them
and send them back home and then they get thrown back in the river. We have
to heal the whole family."

Nenqayni's mandate is "to provide holistic healing to First Nations and
Inuit youth, families, and communities in a safe and secure environment."
The centre treats youth from Shuswap, Carrier, and Chilcotin nations but
also sees youth from across the country.

The centre began treatment services in 1983 and was operating out of the
old residential school, St. Joseph Mission, south of Williams Lake. The
program operated briefly out of the Slumber Lodge motel and officially
opened its own facility in the summer of 1991.