The Cebu City Office of Substance Abuse Prevention (COSAP) relaunched its We Care program on Monday with a different approach in engaging drug dependents to recovery sessions.
Personnel from COSAP, together with psychologists and former drug addicts, will personally hold the program in some barangays in Cebu City instead of the drug users going to the COSAP office.
The pilot program of the rebranding was held last Monday in Barangay Mabolo where 34 drug users attended the one-hour class session, that included a “basic psychology” seminar and an open forum on drug addiction recovery.
COSAP head Dr. Alice Utlang said the program will be held twice weekly, for three months in every barangay.
Utlang said enrollees in the We Care program are subjects of Oplan Tukhang (tuktok hangyo) who vowed to stop their illegal drug activities before police officials.
She said they were planning to hold the next We Care program in Barangays Buhisan and Sambag Dos, where 54 and 15 persons registered to attend, respectively.
“We Care is the city government’s means of intervention for the recovery of drug users – and this is only intended for drug users and dependents, not long-time addicts,” Utlang said in Cebuano.
Utlang said COSAP will be sending progress reports of every enrollee to the police.
“We need to submit the progress report of every drug dependent, and we will make the necessary recommendations whether or not this particular person should be sent to the rehabilitation center for further treatment,” said Utlang.
She also said those enrollees who fail to attend at least one session would be given a one-week extension to make up for their absence, while those who fail to pass the random drug testings would be slapped an additional month
“On their first drug test we don’t want to make any immediate conclusions yet. They will not face sanctions of any sort if we find out that they are still into illegal drugs. If they remain positive on the second round of drug testings, that’s when we need to take necessary actions and impose the penalty,” Utlang said in Cebuano.
Meanwhile, Utlang said it appeared that the drug rehabilitation facilities in Cebu were not enough to accommodate the large volume of drug dependents and pushers who surrendered to the authorities in the past few days.
“For the meantime, the city government will provide out-patient drug recovery services, such as We Care, since there are not enough rehabilitation centers to take in all these drug users,” Utlang said.
Launched in 2014, We Care offers free recovery sessions to drug dependents.
To enroll in the program, identified drug dependents are tasked to submit information about themselves for profiling.
Once enrolled, they are required to attend the classes designed to help them in their recovery.
“But we still need to see our progress. We are also compiling separate status report, so that officials can see whether or not we are qualified to expand our We Care program city-wide. I am also very glad that we garnered support from the council by giving us budget every year. For this year, the council allocated P5 million for COSAP,” she said. /UP Cebu Intern Morexette Marie Erram
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