Concerned parents fill treatment gap with pilot project for drug-addicted youth

A group of Ottawa parents concerned about the rise in opioid overdoses in the city is filling what they see as a gap in the system for helping drug addicted youth.

We the Parents is starting a substance and opioiduse pilot program to help teens in the city's west end who have drug issues discuss problems and find peer support. But executive directorSean O'Leary, who founded the group to find help for his 17-year-old daughter Paige, says he's frustrated money has been made available forharm-reduction strategies such as supervised injection sites and not treatment programs.

Without government funding, We the Parents willrelyentirely on corporate and private donors and, as of Thursday, had raised just under half of its estimated $287,000 yearly operating budget.

In a meeting held Thursday night, O'Leary said heapproached the City of Ottawa andOttawa Public Health for $150,000. He hoped the money could come from provincial money handed over to the City of Ottawa,earmarked forthe creationof moredetoxand treatment spaces, as well as to equip police and firefighters withnaloxonekits.

The weekly volunteer-led program would be similar to Alcoholics Anonymous but specially designed for youth, said O'Leary.The groupwill also be running meetings twice a month for parents of drug-addicted youth, as well as monthly educational seminars for the general public, he said.

Group facilitators will receive training througha free program called SMART Recovery, he said.

The meetings which will start Oct.20 also incorporatea social element, allowingteens timeto spendtogether after each session. The people leading the groupswill be closer to the teens' age, too.

O'Leary said this program would especially help teens struggling after completing other treatment programs.

Often, when [teens]try to stop doing drugs they end up being isolated. And they're isolated for a while and eventually they go back to their old friends.- Sean O'Leary, founder of We the Parents and father of a drug-addicted teen

"Often, when [teens]try to stop doing drugs they end up being isolated. And they're isolated for a while and eventually they go back to their old friends," he said.

"And that's part of the stigma because it's hard for them to get new friends that don't do drugs because people are scared of their kids hanging out with our kids that are known to do drugs."

Stephanie Moscrip is a mother of 11-year-old twins in grade 6. She went to her second We the Parents meeting Thursday because she worries about what her kids could face when they enter middle school next year.

"Absolutely, I'm concerned. They're just kids. They don't have that rational processing that we have as adults. If they're exposed to those choices, you don't know what choice they're going to make," she said.

Former B.C. health minister Terry Lake alsospoke atThursday's meeting.

"I've seen the controversy around overdose prevention sites, for instance. There shouldn'tbe a controversy. We should be keeping people alive."

According to Ottawa Public Health, up to the end of September,Ottawa has had 255opioid-relatedoverdose visits to the emergency room in 2017, or an average 30 per month.But said there has been an increase in those numbers over the past few months.