Substance Abuse Center Starts With March to Clean Streets

Dozens of red-eyed drug addicts swaggered from alleys and front-door stoops to watch in amusement as children, parents and Head Start leaders marched to protest an open-air drug market that has paralyzed the urban neighborhood.

“We want our neighborhood back!” yelled Barbara Fielding, director of the Neighborhood House Assn., which operates Head Start programs in the area.

The 300 marchers waved handwritten posters and signs, and chanted rhythmic slogans: “Hey Hey, Ho Ho, You Drug Dealers Have Got to Go!” and “No More Drugs, Keep the Streets Clean!”

The goal: clear the streets of blatant drug activity and begin a substance abuse center at the Webster Head Start center.

The Webster center, operating in a beige stucco church about a block from the march site, is one of 32 centers across the nation to share in a $4.4-million experimental program that focuses on substance abuse intervention and prevention.

“There’s a serious, serious drug problem in the area,” said Eddie Edwards, one of the march organizers. “It’s unbelievable. There are all-day drug sales. If we walked through these alleys we can find needles right now.”

Nationally, Head Start is a $2.2-billion federally funded preschool program that provides 622,000 poor children, ranging in age from 3 to 5, with nutritious meals, health screening and basic educational and social skills. Now, the Bush Administration wants to add programs focusing on the needs of parents.

“Children need parents who will take on the neighborhood schools, keep them free from drugs--and I include alcohol in my list of drugs, parents who will stand up to the drug merchants and say, ‘I’m clean. I got my values straight, and by God don’t you mess with my children,’ ” said Wade Horn, the senior federal administrator for Head Start.

Sixty children are enrolled at the Webster Head Start center, but many parents have been reluctant to take them there because of the drug trade and accompanying violence.

James Ajemian, director of the substance abuse project, insisted that the streets be cleared of overt drug activity before the program could begin. Thus the protest march last April.

Since then, Ajemian has conducted weekly training sessions to teach the Head Start staff to identify parents who are drug abusers and children suffering negative side effects. Parents will be trained this fall.

Ajemian, who works at the School of Social Work at San Diego State, has a staff of more than a dozen people, including graduate students and consultants.

“We first start with substance abuse and then try to show them that substance abuse is related to other problems in the community,” he said.

“We are creating an arrangement whereby we are in constant touch with each other, developing referral systems for parents who are on drugs and need personal help,” he said.

Efforts also are under way to develop by this fall a substance abuse program specifically for 4-year-olds, Ajemian said.

Ajemian said the long-term goal is to “develop a full-fledged Social Service Center for Head Start.”