Drug treatment centres ‘overworked’

Press, 16 July 1986, Page 22

Drug treatment centres ‘overworked’

PA Wellington Alcohol and drug treatment centres are overworked, the chairman of the Wellington Co-ordinat-ing Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse, Mr Keith Sunkel, said. Every treatment centre in Wellington had a waiting list and the problem was national, Mr Sunkel said.

“This is a very serious situation. We make an earnest plea to the Government to reconsider their funding of chemicals dependence programmes.” Mr Sunkel was responding to news of the Totara Trust’s financial problems.

The trust, an alcohol and drug rehabilitation centre in Masterton, faced' a loss of at least $20,000 in the coming year on top of the $20,000 deficit carried forward from 1985, said its director, Mr Joe Wenham. Mr Sunkel said the Government was holding funding of the Alcoholic Liquor Advisory Council,

which contributed to the Totara Trust and other centres, at the levels of previous years. Inflation had been eroding financial resources. Considerable difficulty was being experienced providing adequate outpatient treatment, he said. People were coming to centres with problems with alcohol, prescription drugs, heroin, marijuana, cocaine, homebake and glue.

“We are hardly coping now with the present caseloads,” he said. Patients at Totara Trust had shown themselves prepared to pay some of the treatment price by contributing most of their sickness benefits.

“If these same people were to enter a hospitalbased treatment programme ’they would receive a full sickness benefit and have nothing deducted,” Mr Sunkel said.