Financial woes shuts residential care site

Financial woes shuts residential care site

July 3, 2009

By Charles M. Bartholomew, Post-Tribune correspondent

CHESTERTON — Thursday was the last day for office workers at the Pathway Family Center, the residential care and referral facility for teens and their families who face substance abuse problems.

Clinicians will see the last clients next Thursday, according to Pathway CEO and President Terri Nisseley, who described her mission as, “We save kids.”

After that, families seeking help will have to take their troubled teens to the agency’s facilities in Indianapolis as much as several times a week, as they had to before Pathway opened its Porter County location in 2007 at the invitation of the Community Action Drug Coalition.

Among the center’s free services that will stop are a hot line that handled 420 calls last year and a community education program for youths, teachers and health care workers that served 24,320 people, Nisseley said.

“Not having residential care here puts them in a bind. I know first-hand working with kids … the importance of a residential treatment center,” said Portage High School Resource Officer Troy Williams, a member of the local board for Pathway.

Local officials agree with Nisseley’s claim that the center’s adolescent treatment programs are “very successful” in turning young people away from drugs.

On the Web site www.pathwayfamilycenter.org , Porter County Sheriff David Lain says that Pathway “has proven to be successful in this fight. They are having an impact with the most vulnerable victims of addiction; adolescents and their families.”

Nisseley said this week the county still has a “huge” need for this kind of treatment, but the demand necessary to support the center financially never materialized.

“You know the saying, ‘Build it and they will come?’ I now know that idea will not work.”

She said the center had been started with high hopes of those who had asked Pathway to come here. The center sought $1 million in local funding in support. They started with $200,000 from the Porter County Council and the amount from the Drug Coalition, but fundraising and referrals never covered the costs.

In addition to the recently-recession, she blamed ongoing Hoosier insularity.

“I think there was political pressure for people in positions of referring kids for help not to change their referral patterns,” she said.

She said those positions included “anybody working in the justice system, school systems, local treatment programs.”

“I wouldn’t go there,” said Pathway board member Robert Taylor, coordinator of the Porter County Drug Task Force with the county Prosecutor’s Office when asked to comment on her statement.

But he agreed strongly with her about the effects of the economy and the financial obstacles to families seeking treatment.

“Treatment at the center can cost $15,000 to $20,000. Most people have to borrow — it’s like sending your child to college,” he said.

He said he often referred teens to the center and will continue to do so.

Comment on this story at www.post-trib.com

chesterton