Pubdate: Wed, 05 Apr 2006
Source: Salmon Arm Observer (CN BC)
Copyright: 2006 Salmon Arm Observer
Contact:  http://www.saobserver.net/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1407
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?241 (Methamphetamine - Canada)

NO HELP FOR WORRIED MOM

Drug addiction: Six weeks' wait to get counselling for daughter.

Debbie Latimer is glad the provincial government has added another $8
million in funding for youth addictions in the province.

But the desperate Salmon Arm mother wants to know when the funding
will reach the street level.

A single mother, Latimer just discovered that her 14-year-old daughter
is using drugs ? - cocaine, or more likely crystal meth.

Afraid for her daughter's life, she called Interior Health Authority's
local Addictions Service line for help.

The distraught mother was told the first available appointment is six
weeks down the road.

"When I said six weeks, they said sometimes they need to hit rock
bottom," she laments, tears welling. "She could be dead by then."

A call to the Ministry for Children and Families offered no immediate
solution either. Latimer had hoped the ministry could help get her
young teen into temporary foster care to get her away from Salmon Arm,
a community she says has a serious drug problem.

But she was advised there would be no help from that quarter because
her daughter is not being abused, nor is she being neglected.

"If I slap her around and say that I abused her, would you take her
and put her somewhere safe?" Latimer asked a Social Services worker.

"They told me I wasn't taking it very seriously. I told them they're
not taking it very seriously."

Latimer says until last summer, her daughter, now in Grade 9, was
enrolled in the French immersion program and the two shared a close,
trusting relationship.

But last summer, there was a change in the teen's social circle, and a
change in behaviour.

Trust began to erode a few months ago, when Latimer first began to
notice her daughter was coming home with alcohol on her breath. The
drinking escalated and Latimer began finding empty liquor bottles.

"She's gone from a straight-A student to close to being on her way
out," says Latimer. "She was coming home, always on time, but drunk."

Attempts to ground her child resulted in her running
away.

Tracking her through cell phone numbers of her friends, Latimer found
the 14-year-old in a home where adults were doing drugs. "I yanked her
out, I was a total lunatic," she says.

When her daughter asked if she could go and spend some time with one
of Latimer's brothers, the frantic mother was grateful."

After six weeks at her uncle's, the teen asked if she could return
home and, shortly after doing so, told her mother she had spent an
entire day doing cocaine.

"That was my first realizations she was doing that," says Latimer,
tears surfacing again.

Two days later, she never came home. A search of her daughter's room
turned up pieces of lottery forms, used apparently commonly, to wrap
up cocaine.

"I called police and they said 'Get some sleep, she'll show up in the
morning.'"

But she didn't. Latimer's mother found her granddaughter in a house
near the high school with another girl and two boys. She drove her
granddaughter to her school, where Latimer picked her up.

Latimer's fear is palpable as she describes a young teen she knows who
has had two abortions and been raped once.

She is trying to prevent the same thing from happening to her own
child.

"I want her to be in rehab, I want more resources. I don't want for
Social Services to tell me 'there's nothing we can do to help you,'"
she says.

Meanwhile, Health Minister and Shuswap MLA George Abbott says while
the government does not intend to be prescriptive with the increased
funding, there is a clear expectation that there will be an increase
in resources across the province.

He says IHA will be adding a counsellor to Salmon Arm, someone who
will also work in the rural area around Salmon Arm.

As well, Abbott says, for the first time ever, the province will
include funding for mental health and addictions in the budget on an
annual basis.

Meanwhile, Latimer is doing what she can to keep her daughter
safe.

"My mom picks her up from school and baby-sits her until I get home,"
she says. "And she doesn't get on the phone unless she's right in
front of me." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake