Pubdate: Thu, 02 Nov 2006
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2006 The Vancouver Sun
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun

SOCIAL WORKER, CONSULTANT PURSUE RURAL REHAB FOR ADDICTS

Pair Envision Therapeutic Community to Be Called Summerville

The idea started with Bob Gilson. He was a social worker with a 
program that offered training to the unemployed and addicted of the 
Downtown Eastside.

It was frustrating work.

"I recognized right off the bat that ... a lot of the folks that we 
were working with were going back into the [drug] community."

The problem, Gilson believed, wasn't the program, it was the setting. 
His clients were trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps 
while knee-deep in the filth of the Downtown Eastside. Most failed.

Gilson wanted a better way.

"I saw the need for a residential program where people could be part 
of a broader community in a peer-to-peer system that was supportive 
over a longer period of time, where they could ditch their bad habits 
and re-establish themselves back into society as responsible adults."

In other words, a haven. He wanted a place where addicts could work 
toward a better life away from the temptations of the street.

He had no idea how to go about this until seven years ago, when a 
friend told him of a TV show about a place called San Patrignano, in 
Italy. It was a self-contained addiction treatment community off by 
itself in the countryside, and had a population of approximately 2,000 addicts.

Gilson visited San Patrignano twice. He came away impressed. The 
community's "clients" were taught trades that, the theory was, could 
translate into jobs once they left -- things like quilting, ironwork, 
farming, wine-making, animal husbandry and welding. San Patrignano 
claimed a low rate of recidivism. It also boasted of being 
self-supporting from the sale of wares the clients made on site, and 
from private donations.

San Patrignano had its critics, who maintained that its cure rate was 
no better than government-run treatment centres, and that its methods 
encouraged a cult-like and overly strict regime. (I covered some of 
these complaints in an earlier column.)

But Gilson said he saw none of that. He came back determined to 
establish a community like it here.

He took "a dog-and-pony show" about his idea on the road, he said, 
knocking on the doors of politicians, health boards and philanthropic 
groups. Everybody, he said, told him "Great idea!" then showed him the door.

It was his timing. It could not have been worse. Vancouver was 
embracing the Four Pillars. The pendulum had swung away from 
institutionalized treatment and toward harm reduction. No government 
wanted to invest in a rural community for addicts.

One particularly disastrous meeting epitomized Gilson's problems. He 
had brought over the son of the founder of San Patrignano to meet 
with then-Vancouver Mayor Philip Owen.

The meeting started, according to Gilson, with Owen going around the 
boardroom table and placing copies of the Four Pillars plan in front 
of each person. The founder's son, Gilson said, pushed it away 
without even reading it, then declared the Four Pillars plan had been 
tried elsewhere and failed.

The meeting went downhill from there. (In his account of the meeting, 
Owen did not speak kindly of the San Pat scion or of the community's methods.)

Gilson, disheartened, gave up.

Meanwhile, the dissatisfaction with the Four Pillars approach began 
to grow. The street scene festered, and the incidence of homelessness 
exploded. The public's patience with panhandling, open drug-dealing 
and property theft was exhausted.

Meanwhile, the idea of a Canadianized version of a San Patrignano 
began to filter through the social welfare and business communities. 
Through contacts, Gilson was introduced to Tony Seguss, a management 
consultant. Seguss's own son, Tim, was an addict, and Seguss felt 
strongly that an alternative like San Patrignano might have been able 
to help his son. (Seguss has since lost contact with Tim and does not 
know where he is.) Seguss suggested to Gilson that he forget about 
getting government help and raise the money in the private sector.

Two years ago, he and Gilson wrote a detailed plan of the therapeutic 
community they envisioned. It would be called Summerville, and be 
established on a large acreage in a rural setting (not necessarily in 
the Fraser Valley, Seguss told me). Clients would be free to leave, 
with the understanding they might not be allowed to return if they 
did. It would be also free, though, as at San Patrignano, clients 
must work for their room and board, and earn income for the community 
through the sale of goods they would be trained to produce.

Among others, Gilson showed the plan to Vancouver MLA Lorne 
Mayencourt, who ended up visiting San Patrignano earlier this year 
and who, last month, spoke about it enthusiastically to the Vancouver 
Board of Trade.

Mayencourt's championing of the idea took Gilson and Seguss unawares, 
and they phoned me. In the last few months, Seguss said, a core group 
of eight social welfare and business people have coalesced around the 
Summerville idea, and their plan now is to begin serious fundraising 
within a year's time. They want to move toward establishing a 
community with a population of 25 to 40 addicts, to grow over time.

Given the mood of the public, the question has to be asked:

Has that time come?
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MAP posted-by: Elaine