COUNTYWIDE : Panel Maps Strategy for Drug Programs

A drug advisory group has urged the county to create substance-abuse programs for male adolescents and women with children.

The Ventura County Drug Advisory Board members mapped strategies this week for using $238,000 the county expects to receive in state aid in early April.

The board adopted preliminary plans for an expanded program and voted unanimously to make the improvement of local recovery homes a chief funding priority.

The Ventura County Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs contracts for 30 of the 81 beds in the eight recovery homes in the region. The county’s recovery home program serves alcoholics and drug addicts who cannot afford to pay for their own treatment and do not have insurance plans that will cover such costs.

The expanded program under consideration includes the creation of recovery home programs for male adolescents and women with children. No such programs exist within the county.

Recovery homes are unavailable for male adolescents unless they are either on probation or victims of abuse. And children of women in existing recovery homes must reside in foster homes until their mothers leave the program.

In addition to improving the services available at recovery homes, officials also are considering the establishment of facilities called graduate houses, which provide “sober living environments” for individuals who are no longer in need of the structured program of a recovery home. Such a program would help alleviate the shortage of living spaces available in recovery homes.

Other plans being considered by the board are migrant farm worker outreach programs, a drug-free youth publication and drug education for the elderly.

In other action, the board appointed members to two newly established committees. Alan Munson and Manuela Rice were appointed to the Department Priorities Committee, and Sharon Blondquist and Mary O’Riley were appointed to the County Plan Committee.