Ice users in the Orana region, including Nyngan, are set to benefit from a $1.4 million outreach program delivered by Lyndon Community.
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Minister for Mental Health and Medical Research Pru Goward joined Deputy Premier, Police Minister and Member for Dubbo Troy Grant to announce Lyndon Community’s successful tender to deliver the service, and Ms Goward said the investment would help combat the proliferation of ice in the region.
“There has been a 10-fold increase in ice presentations at emergency departments in western NSW [from 2010 to 2014] and I don’t think this service can come too soon,” Ms Goward said.
“We need to address ice addiction before it becomes the sort of problem that leads to emergency services... to violence and to health problems and that’s what the Lyndon Community will do.”
Lyndon Community already operates Orange’s Lyndon House residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility, as well as visiting services in north-west NSW.
Mr Grant said the pilot program would turn people’s lives around.
“Communities across western NSW are only too aware of the devastating impacts ice is having on our communities and our family members,” Mr Grant said.
“I have said often... that we can’t arrest our way out of this problem.
“It has to be a multi-pronged approach - education, law enforcement and importantly health.”
The funding, which will be spread across four years, will support three outreach workers based at Dubbo to work with ice users, addicts and their families.
Lyndon Community chief executive officer Ed Zarnow called the investment “a step in the right direction”.
“The workers will be going out into the communities... to engage with people out there that are having that front-line effect of the drug ice,” Mr Zarnow said.
“You can send clients to rehab, but if clients also don’t have follow-up or after-care services... then they can relapse.”
Ms Goward said the hub-and-spoke model was perfectly suited to western NSW.
“Most ice services have always been based in a hospital... and people come to it,” she said.
“This time the service will be going out to the community. This is about... making sure when they leave hospital that they get ongoing support... and also picking up on people before they get to the... emergency department.”
