By Sarah Stone

Valley Hill Youth Treatment Centre pushes for awareness

Apr 23, 2013 | 6:13 AM

Only eight months after the Valley Hill Youth Treatment Centre officially opened, it is still trying to get its name into various communities.

The youth treatment centre helps both male and female participants aged 12 to 17 overcome their ‘misuse’ of drugs through a holistic approach.

“Our whole idea is to provide a safe and trusting environment where they can, over a six-week period, learn the things they need to do to change their life award,” said executive director Norman Lewsey.

He said many of the participants have issues of trauma and grief.

“Our idea is to help them unlock those things that have been kept bottle up by the use of alcohol and drugs, so our help is to help get them to open up and talk about those so they can start dealing with that,” he explained.

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However, the centre doesn’t have a waiting list yet, which means it still has spaces in the residential facility that fits up to 15 youths.

Lewsey said the facility in first few months of being up and running has had some “growing pains” as the staff set up the new system, but he said they’re “making strides.”

“I think the biggest hurdle is getting the message out to people. There’s two parts to that. One is letting people know that we exist and two, we’re hearing from a lot of communities saying that ‘we know there are problem in our community, but it’s trying to get the youth to come to treatment,’” he said, adding a lot of the youth are in denial of their substance use and don’t even look for help.

To help increase awareness in the communities across Saskatchewan, Lewsey said they’ll be reaching out and given information on their services.

“We’re doing another blitz throughout the province to make sure people are aware. We sent out stuff last fall and winter and we’re phoning back to people and this time we’re making sure the right people get the information because when we phone back some people say they’re not aware of us,” he said.

“The ultimate goal is to really reach as many youth in Saskatchewan [as possible].”

The youth the facility has “reached”, have shown outstanding results, said Lewsey.

He was just doing a follow-up with one of the participant who said the treatment centre opened his eyes. Another participant explained to Lewsey he was faced with his first temptation and was able to say “no.”

For all the workers, Lewsey said the most rewarding part is seeing the “light bulb” go off in the kids’ minds.

“What we see is a change in their behaviour, their choices—they start to take things seriously.”

For more information, call 306-764-2311.

sstone@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahstone84