Forced detox program sees dozens of youth

Almost 100children have been forced to check into the province's new detoxification centre for youth since it opened nine months ago, and officials are calling the program a success.

A five-bed secure drug stabilization facility for youth opened at Marymound, a non-profit agency in downtown Winnipeg, in November to deal with minorswhose parents had obtained a court order under a new lawto force their children to get treatment for drug addictions.

Ninety-eight children have since been forced into the program, says Marymound spokesman Ian Hughes, and the results have been encouraging.

While some of the youth successfully appealed their court order, more than 80 per cent spent the mandatory week in the detox program, and the majority went on to other treatment programs.

Officials expected they would be treating more young people using crystal meth, but so far that hasn't been the case, he said.

"They're doing a little bit of ecstasy. They're doing a little bit of crystal meth. But they're doing a lot of drinking, they're doing a lot of marijuana," he said.

Most of the children were 16 or 17 years old, Hughes said, although one was just 13.

"It is incredibly gratifying to see kids and parents get support and have the opportunity to access help and support that they haven't be able to before," Hughes said.

"The level of desperation of the parents and sometimes of the kids you think you're hard-hearted and you've seen it all and you've done it all, but the level of desperation to get some help [from] a parent worried, and sometimes legitimately, that they're going to die, yeah, it surprises me at times that it still moves me."

However, Hughes raised concern over the fact that most of the program's participants have been white children who live with their parents. He wonders why the program has not seen aboriginal children, who, he said, have the same problems with drugs and alcohol.

"The numbers should be at least equal and somehow they're not, so I worry that we're missing a population," he said.

Parents and guardians canaccessthe youth stabilization programthrough a centralized intakesystem at 1-877-710-3999.