DanceSafe: CN ON: Help For Hooked Teens

A longtime void for those who give support to adolescents struggling with addiction may soon be filled, Nelly Elayoubi writes

A woman with short brown hair tucks her fingers under her glasses and wipes away the tears that are falling.

"My home is really bad right now. I'm sorry," she says as she breaks down crying.

Another woman reaches for the box of tissue sitting on the table in the middle of a group of parents. She plucks a few tissues and hands it to the sobbing mother.

"I'm a wreck. I feel I've been a wreck forever now."

She opens up to seven other moms, who, like her, have children with drug or alcohol addictions.

Her son was only in Grade 8 when she found three empty 500 ml bottles of cough syrup in his backpack. Now 17, he says he only smokes pot but his mom is convinced that he uses cocaine, ecstasy and magic mushrooms.

His mother gave him a tough ultimatum -- either get out or get clean. He got out and lives with three other teens.

"I want to help him. I want to help him find a place to stay, buy him food, but I know that I can't because I won't be teaching him anything," said the mom, still crying.

A group of counsellors tell her: "You're always there to love them .. just not there to rescue them."

The Dave Smith Youth Treatment Centre is a little house that can be missed by the fast-moving traffic on Bronson Ave.

Youth aged 13 to 18 participate in various programs from Monday to Friday, in the form of a school day.

"The drug of choice is marijuana with alcohol close behind," says Mike Beauchesne, who runs the addictions programs. "Ecstasy, cocaine are also big. We see some, but not a lot, of heroin and crystal meth."

Most of the youth have other issues -- depression, learning challenges, or trouble with the law or school. Some come to the centre on their own. Many are forced to by their school or their parents.

"Sometimes parents come here or send their child here thinking that 'poof, they're in treatment, problems are over and I'm going to have my child back,' " says executive director Melody Paruboczy. "It's not like that. It would be nice to have that magic wand."

Dave Smith is the only addiction centre for young people, but advocates say there's a huge gap in services and support for youth under the age of 16 with addictions.

When Smith opened the centre, his goal was to have a residential treatment centre. But funding just hasn't come through.

Youth addiction isn't a "sexy issue." If it's going to be a priority, all levels of government need to work together, says Paruboczy.

The closest residential treatment centre is Alwood Coed Residential Drug and Alcohol Treatment Centre in Carleton Place. But it only serves youth aged 16 to 22 and there's a three-month waiting list.

"About half of the people ( who ) apply actually end up being admitted for a variety of reasons," says Pauline Sawyer, Alwood's executive director. "Sometimes they go somewhere else, or in some cases, go back to using."

Funding Crunch

The 14-bed facility with rooms for six females and eight males at a time hasn't seen sufficient increases to base funding from the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care in more than a decade, Sawyer says.

"The other area we run into problems is staff retention, because without having regular increases to our budget, we can't offer competitive salaries," Sawyer says.

Those younger than 16 are forced to travel to the Sister Margaret Smith Centre in Thunder Bay, which also has a waiting list.

"It doesn't make sense to be shipping youth that young to Thunder Bay," Sawyer says, adding there needs to be another residential treatment facility and supports the city in its bid.

"We get, I'd say on average, two calls a day looking for treatment for clients that are 15 and sometimes 14."

Ottawa Mayor Bob Chiarelli says there is momentum to get a residential substance abuse treatment facility in the capital.

Last year, after the crack pipe controversy, Chiarelli organized a meeting with city managers, including Police Chief Vince Bevan and Dr. Robert Cushman, CEO for the Champlain Local Health Integration Network. It found a "major and wide ranging" issue with drugs and addictions in the city.

Out of that, a decision was made to form a community partnership to address those issues. Since then, 30 individuals and groups have come together to compare mandates and the challenges they face.

Among priorities identified in the Ottawa Integrated Drugs and Addictions strategy that was unveiled in June is establishing a residential substance abuse treatment centre for youth 16 and under.

Chiarelli then announced that the city was in talks with the government to purchase land along the Rideau River, near Burritt's Rapids, the site of the former Rideau Correctional Centre. The plan is to turn it into a youth treatment facility that is expected to have up to 200 spaces available.

Marie Taylor vividly remembers a young girl she worked with on and off for about five years. The girl was into drugs -- from pot to cocaine and everything in between.

She was 12, and had had it rough growing up under a single mother. She was "very much in need of having a trusting adult in her life."

"With this girl, her personality was so extreme that when she was happy, everyone was happy," Taylor remembers. "She was like a ray of sunshine. And when she crashed, she brought everyone down."

The girl left the centre without a word of goodbye. It's not unusual, Taylor said, for young people to just disappear. Because it is only a day treatment centre, a counsellor can only do so much in those hours.

"We need a residential program. The youth come here for the day and we work with them, and then at 5 p.m., they go back to the street, to their home, to an environment that may trigger them to use," she says.

With a plan in place to build such a centre, there's hope Ottawa's addicted youth will have a better chance to kick their habits.

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THE BEACON ON BRONSON

Here's a look at some facts about the Dave Smith Youth Treatment Centre:

- - Opened its doors in March 1993.

- - More than 600 clients are helped each year.

- - Currently there are 100-150 active clients, not including intake phone calls the centre receives.

- - The drug of choice among youth seeking treatment is marijuana, followed by alcohol.

- - Programs include: First Contact, a structured group therapy program; individual counselling; intensive day program is the core program for the centre and runs for 10 weeks; The Continuing Care program is for clients who have completed the Intensive Day program or have recently completed a residential treatment program and require follow-up support with relapse prevention and new lifestyle management; parent education program is for parents with children with addictions.

- - It has five full-time counsellors and one parent who is a part-time volunteer in the parent support group program.

- - One in six high school students report symptoms of drug use problems.

MAP posted-by: Richard Lake