MACSI turns attention to improving client services

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The Metis Addictions Council of Saskatchewan Inc. (MACSI) has reason to celebrate.

As it does each year, MACSI is planning to celebrate National Addictions Awareness Week, being held this year from Nov. 14 to 20. But this year the organization, which provides alcohol and drug recovery programs to Metis and off-reserve First Nation people in Saskatchewan, will also be celebrating being back on track and planning for the future.

This past February the MACSI board of directors was removed when a review showed evidence of questionable spending by the organizations' executive committee. A four-person interim board was brought in, along with an acting executive director, all of them tasked with working to turn things around and put policies and procedures in place to keep similar problems from cropping up in the future.

During this restructuring process MACSI staff worked hard to ensure clients continued to receive the services they need. Now the organization is at a point where it can turn its attention to making those services even more reflective of those needs.

Dorothea Warren, the acting executive director who in February was seconded from Child and Family Services to help the interim board put things in order, has returned to her government position She has been replaced by Jennifer Schoeck, who assumed executive director duties on Oct. 13. A week later Amanda Flatla, the new director of programming, came on board.

Schoeck brings to the position experience managing counselling centres in B.C., the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, while Flatla brings front-line experience, having worked at MACSI centres in both Saskatoon and Prince Albert.

"I'm actually coming in at a time when a lot of that very good work in terms of stabilizing has been done, policy writing, all of that," Schoeck said. "So hopefully for me it will be a matter of helping steer it into good governance, good management, over the next few years or so."

Much of her efforts will be focused on meeting the needs of MACSI's clients, Schoeck said, stressing repeatedly that, throughout the problems MACSI has gone through, the level of service staff provided to clients has remained unchanged.

"There's a staff that's so devoted to the work they do that the service delivery hasn't been the issue," she said. "They go that extra mile. They have that extra passion and concern for the work they do. They make sure the client's needs are looked after in that sense because it's an issue that's so close to a lot of people's hearts. They've seen it in their community. They've sometimes been through the recovery road themselves or had family members who have, so it's a very intense personal, as well as professional issue."

Schoeck is planning a review of existing MACSI programs with an eye to updating them to better reflect current client needs, including finding ways to better provide services to youth, identifying gaps in services provided in the community, and addressing new and growing problems like the introduction of crystal meth into northern communities.

"This is a time of stabilizing and regrouping and focusing on programming. I think having the addictions awareness week coming right now is excellent because at the management side we've come in now in October, and now the focus in addictions week is, really, the hard work that everyone's done in the year past, but then to look ahead at the coming year and just sort of celebrate our victories," she said.

MACSI in Prince Albert held a sober walk on Nov. 15 to mark National Addictions Awareness Week. In Regina, MACSI will celebrate the week with it's seventh annual sober walk on Nov. 19, joined by MACSI Saskatoon staff and clients who will bus in for the event. The walk will start off at the detox centre at 2839 Victoria Ave. at 12:15 p.m., making it's way down Albert St. to College Ave. and ending at the MACSI Centre at 329 College Ave. East. Presentations will be made afer the walk and a lunch will be served.

The walk itself is symbolic of a person's road to recovery, said Maggie Blondeau, secretary at MACSI's Regina office.

"Usually when someone sobers up or cleans up they start at a detox centre for the most part, and then they come through treatment. And that's the beginning of their sobriety walk through life," Blondeau said.

"And also, because it's in November as well, the other symbol in Saskatchewan of course is that it isn't easy. That you've got to struggle through it. And we go, no matter what kind of weather it is ... It's hard, but if you persist you can do the walk."

MACSI is a non-profit agency run by the Metis Nation-Saskatchewan. The organization offers in-patient and out-patient recovery services in Regina, Saskatoon and Prince Albert. It also provides intervention, comprehensive asessment and recovery planning services, individual, family and group counselling and provides public information and education programs dealing with addictions.