Take part in survey on need for drug rehab centre in Garden Route area

GARDEN ROUTE NEWS - An online survey, organised by the South African National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependency (SANCA) Garden Route branch is taking place to gauge accurately the need for an addiction treatment centre in the Garden Route area and the type of centre.

See a link to the survey below.

This link is also on the SANCA Garden Route on Facebook. For more information, call 044 630 0675 or email adminmb@sancagr.org.

The deadline to complete the 10- to 15-minute survey is this Friday, 6 December.

Although there have been requests by role players in drug rehabilitation for a centre in the Garden Route area, SANCA Garden Route director Denise de Beer points out that it needs to be sustainable and the exact type of care and treatment required needs to be ascertained.

There are a number of private rehabilitation centres, but no state-subsidised ones in the Garden Route area, De Beer says.

Patients in the Garden Route and Central Karoo are referred to state-subsidised rehab centres in the Cape Winelands, Cape Town and the West Coast currently.

Plan

Accurate information is necessary to plan for a rehab centre, De Beer points out.

A day centre, not an in-patient facility, was planned for the Western Cape government building in lower Marsh Street, Mossel Bay, but businesses owners in the vicinity were against the idea.

De Beer said it was important to know the number of referrals taking place to rehab centres in order to know if there was a real need for one in the Garden Route area.

Gather

Information to consider, which the survey is intended to gather, is:

Number of men, women and child addicts.
Whether an in-patient facility or day centre is required.
Should it be a multi-faceted service, dealing with dual diagnosis with addiction and mental or physical illness?
Type of treatment needed: pharmaceutical or other.
Are counselling services required at the centre?
Should people who can afford treatment pay for it and those who cannot, receive free treatment, all at one centre?
Sustainability of a centre: is a fully subsidised government facility justified?

Works together

SANCA works together with municipalities, other non-governmental organisations, relevant Western Cape government departments and the Local Drug Action Committee (LDAC) in Mossel Bay.

De Beer says the Garden Route branch operates from George to Mossel Bay and in the towns in between, and hopes to expand to throughout the Garden Route and central Karoo area.