The Dave Smith Centre on Bronson Avenue is the city’s only day-treatment centre exclusively for youth.
Many Ottawa social service advocates are more hopeful than ever about getting the much-needed youth residential drug treatment centre they have been seeking for years.
Today, the only option available for residential treatment for youth under 16 in Ontario is the Sister Margaret Smith Centre in Thunder Bay.
“People aren’t aware of this, and if they knew, they’d be shocked,” said Mike Beauchesne, a clinical programs co-ordinator with the Dave Smith Youth Treatment Centre on Bronson Avenue.
The optimism comes after an announcement last month from the federal government to invest $10 million into the Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse, a national organization working to reduce substance-abuse harm.
Specifically, the money will be going to support the national Drug Prevention Strategy for Canada’s Youth, an initiative within the government’s new National Anti-Drug Strategy.
Although it is unknown how much money Ottawa will get to fund projects, Beauchesne said funding has been the biggest barrier in making more treatment options available to Ottawa’s youth.
“The need for a residential youth treatment centre in Ottawa is tremendous,” he said.
The centre, which is unique because it is directed exclusively at youth, acts as a day-treatment facility where youth and their parents can undergo treatment and take advantage of counselling services.
However, it is not adequate for youth who may need more extensive and longer treatment services.
Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes said these day-treatment centres are less effective because they don’t take the youth out of their problematic environment. At the end of the day they go back home to the source of their problems, she said.
Holmes said officials have determined “the most important missing link is a residential treatment centre for youth.”
The lack of such a centre hasbeen a major concern in the downtown Ottawa area since a report released by the health, recreation and social services committee addressed the issue two years ago.
The report indicated that in 2005, 17 per cent of youth who were sent to the Sister Margaret Smith Centre were from Ottawa, constituting a large proportion of the centre’s population.
That was three years ago.
The difference today, said Holmes, is that hospitals, school boards, treatment centers, and shelters are working together on a drug treatment program needed in the city to bring these youth home.
According to Holmes, the city has been working with the mayor and putting pressure on the provincial government to fund what she calls “Ottawa’s top priority.”
Beauchesne said the Local Health Integrated Network has put forward a business plan that could eventually result in a residential drug treatment centre that could servee 35 youths.
He admits it won’t be easy to get a centre, and it may not be a “cure-all,” but the long-term benefits are tremendous.
“Although the cost of establishing a facility will be great, the cost of doing nothing and the toll in human lives is greater,” said Beauchesne.
He stressed that by making treatment options for youth inaccessible, “we are sentencing these young people to decades of drug addiction.”
And although Ottawa does offer adult residential treatment options, Beauchesne said these youth have to live through years of substance abuse before they are able to access adult treatment.
“It is a sad statement in our community when we say it’s much easier to access adult residential treatment services than it is to access youth residential services,” he said.
The business plan is due to be submitted by early April, and Beauchesne said he hopes to see a plan for a residential youth drug treatment centre sometime thissummer.