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No Comments [ Add Comment ]Waiting lists, lack of funds limit treatment participation
By JaNAE FRANCISOGDEN -- A week after the shooting death of their sister and ex-wife on Adams Street, three men walked the area with a stack of fliers inviting those they met to her viewing.
Teresa Tingey's next of kin -- two of whom have spent many years on the streets themselves -- wanted to use her death to make a difference, possibly getting someone else off drugs, which they say usually is the root cause of women choosing to prostitute themselves.
Their chance came sooner than they thought.
A woman saw them on the street and said she wanted to change her circumstances.
The men formed a triangle around her, keeping her street friends away while she used one of their cell phones to call her mother to come and get her.
"We did one good thing by coming out here," said Tingey's brother, Jimmy Parks, of Auburn, Wash.
"Teresa is on my shoulder and making this happen."
The woman, Loriann Estrada, said the shooting deaths of Tingey and Rosanna Marie Cruz on July 13 got her attention and caused her to want to turn her life around.
Now living with her parents, she's been able to stay off drugs for two weeks on her own even though she had been using drugs on and off for 12 years.
But without money to pay for a rehabilitation program, Estrada said for the time being, she's got only the faces of her children to keep her off drugs.
"The thing is, there's nothing here to help us," Estrada said. "There's no shelters, no hostels where somebody gets tired can afford a bed, even if that's all it is, just a bed.
"Not everybody down there has friends, not everybody down there has what they call family."
Arrested for her third violation of driving under the influence, Estrada expects to be sentenced to jail.
"It's probably going to be the best thing that can happen," she said. "I think that (jail will) be a good place to start and get some good, clean sober time behind."
Were it not for such a chance to get clean, Estrada wouldn't be as optimistic about her willpower to stay the course.
"Every time you get off the drugs, you get that shakiness," she said. "You get that worry. You just don't know if you're going to make it or not."
It's addressing this situation that could help people turn around, she said.
"I think it's real sad that, here in Ogden, if you're not on Medicaid, a lot of places won't help you," Estrada said. "I don't come from a family with a lot of money, so it's not like they could afford to put me into a rehab. The only time I ever really received help was when I went to jail."
While Ogden's list of services for addicts has increased in the last several years, Kristy Jones, director of the Northern Utah Area Health Education Center at Weber State University, said there still is much room for improvement -- and a group of concerned individuals is working to make that happen.
"When somebody is ready for treatment, you need to jump on it and be there for them," Jones said.
"Getting access to the programs can be a matter of either waiting lists or finances. When you look at a person who is addicted to substances, they probably don't have the finances, so they'll have to wait."
Often, it's two or three months before their name comes up on a waiting list, she said.
"Sometimes they are not ready or they are not in the same place in their lives to want treatment by then," she said.
Jones is a member of the Weber Coalition for a Healthy Community, which, in May, surveyed 120 women of childbearing age who were current or former drug users.
With the goal of finding out what attracted these women to drugs in the first place, surveyors also asked those who weren't in treatment if they wanted to be treated.
Twenty percent said they would like to enter a treatment program.
Jones said among the lessons learned in the survey was that a high percentage of the women, 78 percent, have children.
One woman in the survey said more affordable programs are needed because people who use drugs usually don't have money for rehabilitation.
Another woman said transitional housing programs for those who have lost housing, jobs and children would be helpful.
A complete list of survey results will be released later.
But survey organizers wanted to share the limited information they now have to raise public awareness.
Sally Jones, McKay-Dee Hospital Center's representative on Ogden's Health Access Team, said she's hoping to use publicity surrounding the survey to raise funds for $2,200 scholarships into the Salvation Army women's drug-treatment program.
"We know it's a problem," she said. "We do want to help, but they have to want to get off drugs. ... Frankly, I don't think either one of (the women who were shot) would have been prostitutes if they weren't on drugs. It's the drugs that are the problem."
Now in its third year, the spiritually based 12-step Salvation Army program routinely keeps more than half of those who enter clean and sober long enough to graduate from the six-month program.
And when they do graduate, the women have job training, improved education, better thinking processes and life skills they didn't have when they entered.
Patsy Smith, an administrator of the Salvation Army program, said participants begin with a month to six weeks of seclusion from the outside world except for written correspondence.
"They are to get into themselves and look at what their lives have been and what they want to do," she said.
Officials at area hospitals said this is the kind of help drug addicts need, but often they are misdirected on how to go about getting it.
Carolyn Tomepich, director of behavioral health at McKay-Dee, said it is an almost a daily occurrence that someone unsuccessfully tries to admit him- or herself or a loved one into the emergency room for a drug addiction.
"I don't want to imply in any way that it's so simple as to go to the emergency room," Tomepich said, explaining that only those deemed in imminent danger are admitted.
Other hospital programs are limited to those who can pay or who are covered by insurance, she said.
Most often, those who go to the emergency room are turned away with a list of programs designed to meet their needs, she said.
"This is very frustrating for people," she said. "They say, 'I've finally convinced this person to come here and check into the hospital, and you are telling me that you can't help me.' "
Tomepich recognizes that, for people who are vulnerable to a relapse, the time it takes to leave the hospital and find a program where they qualify can create an opportunity for failure.
Tomepich referred to the area 2-1-1 service list of drug-treatment programs found at www.211.utah.org.
That list includes the Intermountain Specialized Abuse Treatment Center, New Horizons, The Utah Alcoholism Foundation Serenity House, Veterans Community Based Outpatient Clinic and Weber Mental Health, also sometimes referred to as Weber Human Services.
Most of those programs are limited to those who can pay for services.
A program not on the list is the Women's Retreat House, a year-old 12-step residential program. Sally Jones said the program charges for services.
Mike Webb, director of Ogden Regional Medical Center's insurance-based or self-pay Alcohol Chemical Treatment program, said, over the last year, Ogden has increased its services for women with addiction problems.
"We've actually had some great success with people getting services," he said.
For the last decade, the Davis County Women and Children's Program has successfully allowed children to stay with mothers going through drug treatment there, he said.
But a major stumbling block to all the programs is the frequent resistance by participants to make actual changes.
"You've got to remember that a lot of those people say they want treatment, but they don't really want it," Webb said. "They struggle and they don't follow the rules, and the treatment centers end up kicking them out."
Parks said he has seen drug addicts go in and out of programs in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he worked as a guide in a safe house for teenage prostitutes, junkies and young mothers who are on drugs.
While he admits he can't change anybody, he said he's had success in reaching out to a person's heart.
"They come in and out and it's hard to get them to see that they can have a better life," he said.
"Sometimes, maybe on the 100th time they come in, they decide to make things different."
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