With the legislature’s approval, the Department of Health and Human Services plans to cut its budget by 20 million dollars over the next two years.
HHS officials and some lawmakers say these cuts are designed to have the least impact possible.
The final details have not been worked out, but one community is worried about the future of its fledgling drug and alcohol treatment program.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s Dan Gorenstein reports.
A girl we’ll call Stephanie is a 15 year old 8th grader.
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1:03 it’s like everyday I would go and drink. And get pretty drunk.
Stephanie admits those days of drinking weren’t her finest.
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3:40 I’d always fight with my sister and my parents. All the time I would go home drunk. I would never stay in school. I’d leave every day. That is part of the reason why I am in 8th grade again. I wouldn’t do my homework, I wouldn’t care about anything, just getting drunk. But not anymore.
Stephanie says she isn’t drinking anymore, and for the most part stays at school.
The 8th grader attributes some of the changes to Ramona Berman.
Berman is Newport Middle High School’s drug and alcohol counselor.
While this is the counselor’s first full year in the school, she spent ten years at a local mental health facility.
So there’s not much that shocks her...not the 16 year old who dropped out to sell heroin. Not the kid who started smoking marijuana with his parents when he was 8.
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:00 kids use marijuana, there’s some cocaine, some ecstasy, heroin, LSD, but primarilaly you will find the kids in this school use marijuana, alcohol, or LSD. Parents, varies. There seems to be alcohol, heroin, cocaine, amongst some of the parents.
Berman says she regularly sees 31 students and four parents.
Her program is the only one in Sullivan County where people can receive free drug and alcohol counseling.
The only other option in the area is to pay for the service which costs around 90 dollars an hour.
So many in Newport worry the HHS cuts indicate the beginning of the end of a program they say is accessible and making a difference.
Last week, HHS Commissioner John Stephen outlined the department’s cuts.
Those include a 500,000 dollar reduction to drug and alcohol prevention and treatment services.
When pressed by lawmakers why he decided to make those cuts, Stephen was matter of fact.
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14:13 no matter what we do, there are effects. This is an area that is reasonable to have that type of cut.
Since 2001, a percentage of state liquor sale profits have been set aside to fund alcohol and drug treatment programs.
But in this biennial budget, lawmakers raided that fund and took more than 3.7 million dollars to help balance the books.
HHS officials insist no program will feel the effects of the cuts until July 2004.
In fact, it’s not even clear if the Newport school program will be affected.
The Governor’s Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention, Intervention and Treatment will make that decision.
But counselor Ramona Berman says that assurance is of little solace to her students.
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3:12 ... They listen to the news. They are wondering. I think it is very difficult for them, they say, ok, we’ve come, and we’ve started to build a relationship, we begin to trust, and b/c of cuts, we begin to lose it... They don’t believe that is fair, and what about them? How about them?
Stephanie, for one, is pretty sure where she would be if it weren’t for Berman.
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3:50 chances are I will get in more trouble. Right now she is not exactly my babysitter, but kind of. b/c she si the one that keeps track of me, and reports back to the courts...I know she is always going to be looking for me, and I got to stay clean b/c she always talks to me all the time. I can’t leave school and get drunk anymore...If she wasn’t here right now, I would probably be in placement.
Being in ‘placement’ means Stephanie could be in a facility for minors in trouble.
And those programs cost tens of thousands of dollars a year.
Sullivan County manager Ed Gil de rubio says the kind of counseling Berman does ultimately saves the state in the long run.
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1:05 ... you have an individual for 60 thousand dollars who can directly touch and make a difference and help 40 school students, and go into their homes, and help their parents, that is peanuts as opposed to one person getting convicted and going to the department of corrections and we are paying 28 thousand dollars a year to fund that slot at the dept. of corrections.
Riley Regan is the Director of the HHS Division of Alcohol and Drug Services.
He says he would like to see programs like Newport’s survive.
But Regan says he wants to see locals, rather than state bureaucrats decide which programs deserve further funding.
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4:08 ...I want the county attorney, the county sheriff, the county jailer, the county commissioners, the county welfare agencies, the county drug treatement programs, I want them to sit in the same room, and say this is how much is available from the state, how are we going to spend it...And once they begin to do that, they put in some of their own resources. If this is the major criminal justice problem don’t you think somebody ought to be spending money there as well?
Sullivan County’s Ed Gil de rubio says just like the state, the county is struggling financially.
And he doesn’t see how the county could afford the program.
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1:25 I’ll tell you, right now, the way things are with budgets, especially county budgets, it would be a hard sell...we are looking to cut b ack on services. We are back on the nursing home the department of corrections, and any additional program we would have to introduce it would be a hard sell.
The Governor’s Commission is expected to discuss future cuts, including the Newport Middle High School program, in mid-December.
For NHPR News, I’m DG.
