For The Bohol Tribune
In This Our Journey
NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS
A project with the forbidding title, Community-Based Drug Demand Reduction Program & Recovery Support System (CB-DDRP&RSS) for the Municipality of Baclayon, may well be the answer to the riddle of how to address the messy situation of having hundreds of surrenderees without a comprehensive treatment and recovery program.
I have just been from a meeting between Miriam Peguit-Cue, a noted psychologist from the Professional Regulations Commission (PRC) and the New Day Resource Center (NDRC) in Davao City, and Karen Flood-Capapas and Karina Uy, both of Holy Name University and in less than an hour I was swept off my feet listening on what they planned to do to support the quest for a more humane and effective way to deal with 429 surrenderees in Baclayon.
They realized the surrenderees could not fit into the first and only drug rehabilitation center in the province, the FARM It Works Balay Kahayag (FITWBK) Chemical Dependency Treatment Center in barangay Laya which can only take in 30 clients at a time.
Getting the surrenderees out of the province to training centers in Cebu and other places would be too costly an option for both the Government and the affected families. Hence, the three psychologists agreed on the need for a community-based approach to the problem.
In a presentation made two weeks ago to the Technical Working Group responsible for the planning and implementation of Bohol’s drug rehabilitation program, Miriam Cue and Jay Valderrama, NDRC program director, cited the following as features of the often-cited community-based approach as opposed to the conventional center-based modality:
“any drug demand reduction effort or recovery support initiative for those with SUD [Substance Use Disorder], that exists within a community and generally operated by people from that very community;
“a cooperative endeavor that utilizes available community resources on a voluntary, self-sufficient and self-sustaining basis”
What they talked about within the hour were based on these precepts, aware that social preparation and community involvement could result in the use of local human and other resources for an affordable and sustainable treatment process for drug abuse victims.
On the matter of applying ASSIST (Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test) to determine the addiction level of surrenderees, the HNU is willing that its 37 senior psychology students be intensively trained on the use of this tool designed, field-tested and validated in several countries by WHO and has been used worldwide since 2010.
NDRC Davao, which has been proposed as training institution for the Drug Advisory Program (DAP) of the Colombo Plan Secretariat based in Sri Lanka, will provide three trainors for this vital and pace-setting activity that will give a vigorous head start to the evolving community-based approach to drug rehabilitation efforts in the province.
With Baclayon aspiring to be the initial pilot area for this innovative approach, the training and eventual deployment of 37 trained psychology interns from HNU will be enough to cover the municipality’s 17 barangays with a two-member research team. As the NDRC presentation says:
“It is important that those responsible for intake, screening and assessment should be trained properly to ensure a systematic process of gathering personal and other pertinent information of the person as basis for determining the severity of the problem, and for identifying the most appropriate means of assistance.”
The NDRC consultants will join hands with the Psychology faculty of HNU to ensure that data collection per surrenderee will be professionally and properly done. This will be in consonance with Principle 2 as articulated by the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) in the document, Community-Based Treatment and Care for Drug Use and Dependence:
Principle 2: Screening, Assessment, Diagnosis and Treatment-Planning
Comprehensive assessments, diagnosis and treatment planning are the basis for individualized treatments that address the specific needs of each patient and that will also help to engage him/her into treatment.
It is then clear that the resulting database will be used as basis for planning appropriate interventions for each category of clients and thus ensure a more effective counselling and treatment process.
Through this database, high-risk clients can be identified and assigned to drug rehab centers outside the province while planned facilities by the Government and private sector are still being built. It is expected that clients in this category will not exceed 10% or even lower based on observed behavior of the surrenderees.
It has been observed that despite lack of systematic treatment and counselling, there has been no spate of violence and majority seem to refrain from resorting to the old habit by sheer force of will or they are simply restrained by fear of being neutralized (translation: arrested and or killed) by either the police or so-called vigilantes which have sprung up everywhere for the past two months. Others say this is just the calm before the storm.
It has been proposed that the individualized database of the surrenderees can be aggregated and assessed for the purpose of programming the inputs relevant to the current needs and addiction status of the surrenderees.
The following key activities have been recommended once the database has been set up:
-Presentation/discussion of the ASSIST outputs to the Sandigang Bayan,
Mayor and the technical agencies indicating their implications
in terms of relevant interventions, policy support and assistance
to surrenderees in terms of their categorization (1 day)
-Presentation/discussion of findings and possible interventions to Barangay
Captains (1 day). BCs to orient their respective Councils.
-Initial organization and orientation of heads of families with
surrenderees to be done by Barangays under the
Councils with assistance from the Municipal Technical Working Group (TWG) and designated Community Facilitators.
These key activities will ensure broad-based participation of local communities and families , as well as the local governance structures. It is expected that through this participatory process, the healing and treatment process will be de-stigmatized and that a humane perspective on the drug addiction problem in the community will prevail.
Now to answer a question probably in everybody’s mind at this point – how much will be the cost of this community-based project?
Here is the estimated budget estimate as part of the proposal to be submitted to the Baclayon LGU:
SUMMARY OF FINANCIAL REQUIREMENTS
Support to establishing a Project Coordination Office
at MTO ………… Php 312,000 (35%)
Orientation of SB, Technical Agencies,
NGOs and CSOs …………………… 60,800 (7%)
Training on the use of ASSIST
for Screening/Assessment ………………… 91,500 (11%)
Encoding the data and storing
them in a central file ……………… …… 80,000 (9%)
Planning workshop to link ASSIST
data with interventions ……………… 47,000 (5%)
Hiring of external consultants to provide
technical assistance ………. 280,000 (33%)
==========
Total ……………………………………Php 871,300
Contingency (15% of Total) ……………… 130.695
GRAND TOTAL …………………….PHP 1,001,995
We think that with resolute commitment and resourcefulness, the LGU will be able to producethis amount with the help of its partners: the Provincial Government, private sector, faith-based organizations, NGOs and civil society organizations.
Or they can do vigorous fund campaigns using all sorts of drvies and tapping the resources of the kababayans abroad. If they can do this to organize festivities, family and class reunions, beauty constests and all sorts of parties , they can surely do this “to save souls” and ensure the survival of our province and its people.
The three ladies I spent the afternoon with know that this crisis is also an opportunity to rediscover our unity around a project worthy of everybody’s support for Bohol and the country as a whole. Indeed may we not all fiddle while Rome burns. For comments, email: npesteslos@gmail.com #drugfreeboholcampaign
NMP/24 Sep 2016/5.20 a.m.
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