TREATMENT CENTRE'S DAYS NUMBERED

Martin Spray, the executive director of the Victoria Life Enrichment
Society (VLES), is fighting hard to keep the society's residential drug and
alcohol rehabilitation services from going under.

VLES offers the only non-profit residential rehabilitation for patients
suffering from drug and alcohol addictions on the Island. At the end of
May, the Vancouver Island Health Authority announced that provincial
funding for the program will cease at the end of this month, on July 31.

"We've got people whose lives, in many respects, are on the line," Spray
said between a lunch meeting with Liberal Victoria-Beacon Hill MLA Jeff
Bray and a telephone call from provincial Human Resources Minister Murray
Coell (Saanich-North and the Islands).

Spray is trying to contact every minister in the province to lobby support,
and he is working to publicize the society's program and its closure.

Already, 27 people who were preparing to receive care at VLES in July have
been turned away.

"The fallout for this is huge," said Linda Lendrum, a senior counsellor at
South Vancouver Island Assessment and Resource Service in the Cowichan
Valley. She estimated that, in the last year, her organization referred at
least 20 people with addictions to VLES.

"We're going to have to find another treatment centre in Vancouver," she
said, adding that it is difficult to find a rehabilitation centre in the
Lower Mainland that offers residential care and has openings earlier than
September or October.

Health authority representatives said the key reason for cancelling funds
to VLES is because of a Health Canada report, Best Practices: Substance
Abuse Treatment and Rehabilitation.

"Day treatment programs are shown to be as effective, if not more
effective, than residential programs," said Margaret McNeil, the health
authority's regional director of mental health services.

She said the decision is not based on cost containment. "We have decided to
reallocate the funding to provide more services."

The health authority estimates that a typical day treatment program costs
roughly $45 a day, while residential treatment at VLES costs nearly $150 a
day. McNeil said that new day services are being planned for Vancouver
Island, allowing the health authority to help more people in the community.

But Spray said the findings of the Health Canada report are arguable and
the real reason the health authority is cutting VLES is in order to save
money. "The bottom line is bucks."

"What residential (care) provides that others don't is the experience of
being (with other patients and counsellors) 24 hours a day. It provides a
retreat-like experience ... it just lets you be more focused and intense,"
he said.

McNeil said there are alternatives for people seeking residential
rehabilitation - including public facilities in the Lower Mainland and a
private facility in Nanaimo.

Spray said each rehabilitation facility is different, and a variety of
approaches are needed in the province. "We're losing some diversity for sure."

He added that private services will be difficult for many VLES patients to
afford. In 2001/02, little more than one quarter of VLES patients paid
their own way through the program. The rest were sponsored by social
services, addictions services and First Nations programs.

Right now, Spray is angling to move VLES out of the Island health
authority's jurisdiction and make it a responsibility of the provincial
health authority.

"What our hope is is that there would be a reversal (of the decision) ..."
Spray said. "We're governed by a body that thinks locally. I think we need
to be governed by a body that thinks provincially."

He said that further evaluation is needed to determine whether VLES will
become a private institution.