Out of rehab

The closing of the Lifta detoxification center is a low point for the city, say health professionals and parents of drug-addicted youth.

By PEGGY CIDOR
Unless last-minute funding is found, the only center for drug-addicted youth in Jerusalem will close down at the end of the month (photo credit: JERUSALEM POST)
Unless last-minute funding is found, the only center for drug-addicted youth in Jerusalem will close down at the end of the month
(photo credit: JERUSALEM POST)
Four months ago, a 15-year-old boy who had been a normative student discovered a relatively new synthetic drug. Known ironically as “nice guys,” it was, until recently, sold openly in corner stores. In some cases, the youths who use it spray K-300 – a spray for killing cockroaches – on the pills to add to their effect, a move that further encourages addiction.
“He became psychotic, agitated, nervous and unable to focus on anything,” the boy’s father told this reporter over the phone last week. “Then he became violent – he broke all the furniture at home. He laughs and weeps at the same time. We have to guard him 24 hours a day, he doesn’t go to school anymore, and we found out that he is not alone – this is happening to lots of children that age and even younger.”
Not sure how to help his son, the father turned to his friend Ofer Ayoubey, the president of the Gilo neighborhood council, who established contact with the staff at the Lifta Center – a drug rehab facility that treats young adults.
“The chief nurse of the Lifta Center came to our house that same night and started to establish a detoxification program for my son,” the father said. Located in the village of Lifta, the facility is the only center for drug-addicted youth in Jerusalem. However, unless there is a dramatic change in the attitude of either the municipality or the Health Ministry, the Lifta Center will shut down by the end of June.
Officially the controversy between the two bodies is about who is responsible for covering a deficit of NIS 500,000 in the center’s 2013 budget. Mayor Nir Barkat and his deputy Meir Turgeman, who is president of the association that operates the center, say that it is the government’s responsibility, since the center also takes care of young addicts who are not residents of the city. At the ministry, the position is that the association is responsible for the unsuccessful management that led to the deficit.
But there is no argument that closing the Lifta Center will leave a growing number of boys and girls from Jerusalem and its environs without a solution to severe addiction. Social workers, municipality employees and association volunteers on the ground agree that drug addiction has reached a frightening level, and that the age of those falling into it is constantly dropping.
According to social workers, children as young as 12 or 13 have begun falling prey to drug dealers. Many of these children live at home, and though they occasionally run away from school for a few days at a time, parents are often unaware of the magnitude of their children’s troubles until a crisis occurs.
“It is a terrible situation we are facing,” says the 15-year-old boy’s father. “We, the parents, are paralyzed, our life is ruined, our children’s lives are ruined, and there’s no one there to help.”
The drugs – mostly synthetic ones, but also a significant amount of heroin – are sold at night, largely in the center of town. The method is a common one: The dealers start by giving youths the drug for free, and once they become addicted – which happens rapidly – the dealers demand payment.
“If for many years the welfare establishment used to see young adults with alcohol and drug problems around the ages of 18-22, today we’re talking about children 14, 13 and even younger,” says Shimon Futerman, a retired social worker who specialized for years in the struggle against teen drug use.
As a result, the need for a local and efficient rehab center is considered critical, and the decision to close the Lifta Center has caused a lot of anger among the parties involved. At the moment, those parties include the municipality, its welfare department, a group of drug-addicted young adults and their therapists, and the Health Ministry. Even the Knesset has gotten involved, with the Labor, Welfare and Health Committee planning a debate on the issue after Shavuot. But so far, no solution appears to be on the horizon.
Admittedly things are improving at the state level. The situation that prevailed in the early ’70s, in which no official would admit that young Israelis could have such problems, is no longer the norm, and various detoxification programs are available, including medical escorts and support from therapists. The Malkishua Drug Rehabilitation Center, which is under the supervision of the Health Ministry, has been operating in the North since the 1990s. Its success rate is good, according to experts, but as is often the case with such facilities, the number of available beds for new arrivals is limited, and it is far from the center of the country.
In 1990, Jerusalem psychologist Moshe Kron, in an attempt to address the growing number of youth with drug problems in the city, created a center for detoxification and rehabilitation in the abandoned village of Lifta at the entrance to the city. The place is shabby, some of the buildings are precarious and the sanitary conditions are not the best available. But at Lifta, the methods are different from other known ones.
“If in most detoxification centers, the basis is a carrot-and-stick style, here there are only carrots,” explains Futerman. “Since these are young people, they are enveloped with love and affection as a method of helping them overcome their addiction. There are no hierarchy issues; the contact is direct and warm. This is totally different from Malkishua.”
In addition, explains Dr. Katya Levine, the psychiatrist who directs the center, “drug addicts can stay up to three months, while in Malkishua it is usually a shorter term. Here we also provide additional time for a rehabilitation program after the detoxification – and above all, Lifta also admits girls, who in fact do not have any other venue in the [Jerusalem] region.”
This last is an important consideration, Levine continues, since drug addiction has become almost routine among young girls over the past decade or so.
For years, Lifta was operated by the Jerusalem Anti- Drug Association, with professional supervision by the Health Ministry.
Today, says Levine, the center is “part of a nonprofit association that belongs partly to the municipality, while the services, including the salaries of the staff, are financed through the ministry – which, in the framework of the privatization [of social services in Israel], has agreed to purchase services from the association.” As required by law, the contract went through a tender, which the municipality of Jerusalem won.
Over the years, apparently, the financial management of the center hasn’t been the best. Levine admits that 2013 ended with half a million shekels’ worth of deficit.
“However,” she adds, “we have learned our lessons, and 2014 will end with no deficit in the current budget.”
The problem is that – whether due to the 2013 deficit or to a new Health Ministry policy – the ministry has decided not to extend the Lifta Center’s operation, arguing that Malkishua is the best venue and that there is no sense in operating and financing another center. This in turn led the municipality to decide it would no longer support the center.
Turgeman is adamant that neither the mayor nor the city’s welfare department wishes to shut down the Lifta Center. “However,” he adds, “there is no way this municipality is going to absorb the Health Ministry debts and the center’s deficit. What’s more, at Lifta there are only a few Jerusalemites – so why should the taxpayers of this city finance drug addicts from other places?” The deputy mayor is fuming over what he depicts as a smear campaign against the municipality and the mayor, led by some of the Lifta Center staff and initiated by the opposition Meretz list in the city council.
“We cannot take the place of the ministry,” continues Turgeman. “That is out of question. This mayor and myself are dedicated to the needs of youth at risk and drug addicts, but the money cannot come from our taxpayers. The government is the right address.”
He adds that NIS 500,000 is allocated each year to the Jerusalem Anti-Drug Association “to cover... education and advocacy among youth regarding the damage drugs can do, and that is not going to change.” But he argues that it is not the municipality’s responsibility to pay for psychiatrists, physicians and other staff.
“It is true that now there are only a few local children in Lifta,” acknowledges Futerman, “but most of the rest of the patients come from the area surrounding Jerusalem – Beit Shemesh, Betar and Mevaseret. Jerusalem is not only the big city [closest to] these locations, it is the largest city in the country. If Israeli society is facing such a major problem, [the facilities dealing with it] can’t be only in the far North of the country.”