Women’s Anti-Drug Facility to Close Dec. 31

A highly praised program aimed at getting pregnant woman and new mothers off illegal drugs received good and then very bad news this holiday season.

Administrators of the live-in program--which says 155 babies have been born drug-free to women living at its facility--were optimistic only a few weeks ago that federal funding for the program would be continued. That was because of Congress’ recent decision to devote more money to drug-treatment programs.

But on Wednesday, administrators at Tarzana Treatment Center, which oversees the program, said they have been notified that the funding will not be extended. The program, housed on a residential street in Long Beach, will end Dec. 31.

“You hear all this rhetoric from politicians and in the media about the importance of fighting drug abuse, and then it turns out it means nothing,” said an angry Albert Senella, administrator of Tarzana Treatment Center, which oversees several Los Angeles County drug-treatment programs.

“This program serves the most important population we can serve, and that is pregnant women and their children. This is our future.”

A total of 406 women and 203 children have lived at the facility since the program began in 1993. Of the women who completed the program, about 65% remained drug-free a year after graduation, according to program administrators.

But the merits of the program had nothing to do with the decision on continued funding, according to David Mactas, director of the federal Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT). The center, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, funds drug-treatment programs nationwide.

“What we did was not a comment on the Tarzana program,” Mactas said, speaking from Washington. “For the most part, all the programs we had to cut were good ones. It came down to guidelines we had to use.”

The process of determining those guidelines began last year when it appeared there would be drastic cuts in CSAT’s discretionary funds, which the agency used to support programs such as Tarzana’s. The CSAT cuts, completed in March, totaled 60%, Mactas said.

Of the 35 “pregnant and post-partum women” programs, as CSAT called them, 11 were targeted for elimination, including Tarzana’s. Mactas said one of the determining factors in choosing the 11 was racial diversity.

“We wanted portfolio balance,” he said, “meaning we wanted varying types of clientry.”

Mactas said he did not have information at hand on why Tarzana’s facility--which has treated mostly African Americans and Latinas--was eliminated.

Another factor was that the Tarzana program focused on treatment, rather than the evaluations that CSAT was seeking for a study. In a letter sent to the treatment center in July, Mactas wrote, “Tarzana’s . . . breakout in population served did not provide us with the best possible match needed for the CSAT cross-site evaluation.”

The letter particularly rankled Senella. “He is talking about evaluation models, and we have people’s lives on the line,” he said.

Tarzana officials’ hopes grew when Congress, in the omnibus budget bill passed in October, restored much of CSAT’s discretionary funds.

“Congress decided, in the end, that drug treatment was a major national priority,” said former Los Angeles County drug czar Burt Margolin, who now works as a lobbyist. The Tarzana Treatment Center is one of his clients.

“The presumption was that if Congress restored the funding, worthwhile programs like Tarzana’s would continue to function,” he said.

Margolin cited language in the Senate budget bill that restored funding for all “residential women and children grants that were discontinued in 1996.” Language in the House bill was similar.

But Mactas said the reference to “women and children grants” was to another class of programs, which are different from those for “pregnant and post-partum women.”

“We were instructed [by Congress] on specific programs to restore,” Mactas said. “The PPW programs, such as Tarzana’s, was not one of them.”

For the foreseeable future, Mactas’ interpretation will probably apply. Congress is not in session until after the new year, and therefore cannot instruct otherwise.

Tarzana officials have turned their attention to the relocation of the 18 women and 12 infants now living at the Long Beach facility.

“We are trying to find places for them in other live-in facilities,” Senella said. “Unfortunately, most of them have waiting lists.”