A Vancouver drug treatment center for the deaf closes its doors today after graduating its last two clients on Monday.
The Northwest Deaf Addiction Center is another victim of the sliding economy, said Lynn Samuels, CEO of Lifeline Connections.
The Vancouver-based therapy provider operated the 16-bed inpatient facility in the county’s Center for Community Health, 1601 E. Fourth Plain Blvd.
Eight years ago, the center was conceived as a resource for an often overlooked group of Pacific Northwest residents.
? Previously: Lifeline Connections announced it is closing the Northwest Deaf Addiction Center.
? What's new: The inpatient program, based at the county's Center for Community Health, graduated its final two clients Monday.
? What's next: The therapy provider will offer expanded outpatient services for the deaf and hearing impaired.
“The thinking behind it was having it serve as a regional center, being able to provide services to deaf and hard of hearing from other states,” Samuels said. “We felt we could do it more efficiently and more effectively, using American Sign Language as the primary language and hiring deaf and bilingual staff.
“We had a partnership with Oregon; and Oregon has continued to send individuals, but to a far less degree than designed.
“That’s a result of their economic crisis, which hit earlier than ours, and forced cuts in their alcohol and drug treatment funding.”
Samuels added that “It was never meant to be a big profit center, but with all the other cuts within the agency, and with state and county funding cuts, it just was something we could no longer operate.”
? Previously: Lifeline Connections announced it is closing the Northwest Deaf Addiction Center.
? What’s new: The inpatient program, based at the county’s Center for Community Health, graduated its final two clients Monday.
? What’s next: The therapy provider will offer expanded outpatient services for the deaf and hearing impaired.
“In this economy, at this point, we had to integrate those services into our existing programs,” Samuels said.
The Deaf Addiction Center closed out the fiscal year ending on June 30 with a loss of $171,125. The posted loss in the first four months of this fiscal year is $50,487, Samuels said.
A typical resident would spend from 60 to 90 days in treatment, Samuels said, at a rate of $139.20 a day.
It adds up to more than $10,000 per patient, but it’s a very focused treatment designed to save money, she said.
“We thought we would save hundreds of dollars in interpreter fees a day when someone was in residential treatment” and working with a staff fluent in American Sign Language, she said.
When an ASL interpreter is hired to sign for a deaf person, “A two-hour group therapy costs a minimum of $100 an hour, and you need two interpreters for one person,” Samuels said. “And that’s only clinical time.”
The rest of the time, a deaf person without an ASL signer would be isolated from everybody else in the area.
Lifeline Connections, which runs several treatment programs, “will be offering an expanded outpatient treatment program for deaf and hard of hearing. They will have the opportunity, when appropriate, to integrate to our hearing program.”
Lifeline Connections operates Clark County’s detox center, a 60-bed inpatient treatment facility, and the COMET (Co-occurring Methamphetamine Expanded Treatment) program. It also provides therapy services for several county specialty courts.
The board of directors hasn’t decided how to use the space that had been occupied by the 16-bed inpatient treatment center, Samuels said.
