statement of norm henderson · of drug use helps me in my role. from the client's point of...

Name

Address

Occupation

Special Commission of Inquiry into the Drug 'Ice'

STATEMENT OF NORM HENDERSON

21 May 2019

Norm Henderson

1474 Pine Mount Rd, Darbys Falls NSW 2793

Senior Drug and Alcohol Worker, Weigelli Centre Aboriginal Corporation, and Co-ordinator of Aboriginal Hub Partnership between Weigelli and Orana Haven

On 21 May 2019, I, Norm Henderson, state:

1. This statement made by me accurately sets out the evidence that I would be prepared,

if necessary, to give in court as a witness. The statement is true to the best of my

knowledge and belief and I make it knowing that, if it is tendered in evidence, I will

be liable to prosecution if I have wilfully stated in it anything that I know to be false,

or do not believe to be true.

2. I have worked in the alcohol and other drug (AOD) sector for 23 years, in regional

NSW towns, including Cowra, Parkes, Dubbo, Walgett, Bourke and Brewarrina. I am

currently a case worker at Weigelli Residential Rehabilitation Centre. For the last 3.5

years, I have also been the coordinator for a partnership between Orana Haven and

Weigelli, which is an 'aboriginal hub' funded by the public health network (PHN). Prior

to that role, I was the CEO at Orana Haven for 6 years, and before that, I worked at

Lyndon House in Canowindra for 11 years. I started out working in AOD at Lyndon

House, and eventually worked my way up to managing the place.

3. In my current rule, I coordinate the hub project, and manage about eight to nine AOD

outreach workers in Parkes, Walgett and Bourke. They conduct assessments and

provide support and referrals. I am responsible for preparing funding reports for the

PHN funding that supports the program.

4. When Weigelli are short on staff, I do case work there, which involves running groups

and conducting 1:1 sessions with clients. Weigelli runs a three-month residential

rehabilitation program. We run in-house group counselling sessions for residents, and

Signature of Norm Henderson

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also provide residents with access to GPs, psychologists, psychiatrists and mental

health workers, as well as access to wrap-around services.

5. Weigelli was established in 1996, from a funding allocation that flowed from the Royal

Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody: The service is primarily for Aboriginal

people, but at any time we may have 15-20% of residents who are non-Aboriginal.

The program is for persons 18 years and over. We accept single males and females,

and couples (heterosexual and gay couples). To my knowledge, there is no other

Aboriginal residential rehab that takes couples in NSW, and there is only one other

residential rehab centre in NSW that takes aboriginal women.

6. I have a passion for helping people with AOD problems. I am not Aboriginal myself,

but I have spent many years in the back country of NSW working primarily with

Aboriginal people in AOD recovery and support. I myself came out of an addiction to

heroin and speed, and have been clean for 23 years now. I believe my lived experience

of drug use helps me in my role. From the client's point of view, I think they feel more

comfortable talking with someone with lived experience. From my experience, I feel

they are more likely to be straight up with someone like me. When I was CEO at Orana

Haven, I tried to get at least 50% of staff from a lived experience background, because

I think it works better, but it is also important to have a mix of staff from different

backgrounds.

7. Crystal methamphetamine (ice) and other amphetamines have definitely increased the

need for AOD services in my area. I am not sure if there are a great deal of additional

people misusing drugs, but there has been a big increase in the number of people who

are polydrug users. With ice, there is a lot more need for mental health interventions.

8. There is a lot of ice in this region. It seems to be everywhere out this way, and it is

very cheap - often the same price as cannabis. In the last 5 years, we have gone from

approximately 5-6% of residents with problems with ice, to maybe up to 75%. Most

people who have a problem with ice will often have a problem with another drug too.

Even alcoholics are using ice out here - it is cheaper than a carton of beer. A dealer

might say 'I have run out of cannabis, why don't you try this' and offer the user some

ice. The high associated with ice is more instant than cannabis, although it does not

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last as long which means the user needs to go back to their dealer more often. The

chemicals in ice are also more addictive than cannabis, and the drug has an effect on

the dopamine levels in the brain.

9. People are smoking and injecting ice, but I would say injecting is the preferred method,

because the high is a bit more instant than smoking. The drug does not discriminate

- old people, young people, gay people, are all using it. I see a lot of young people,

predominantly 18-25 years of age, coming through rehab. They're all using ice, if not

ice and cannabis. Cannabis laced with ice is not that common out this way, although

some people will lace their own cannabis with ice.

10. When people first enter the program, they sit down with a case worker to develop a

case plan, which sets out any goals they want to achieve. We also consider any

wraparound services they may require such as housing support.

11. Residents are required to be abstinent from drugs and alcohol while on the program.

Our approach to rehabilitation is guided by the principle of harm minimisation, but

often when people are nearing the end of their program, they come to the realisation

that abstinence is the only way to deal with their ice addiction. I do not know too many

people who manage to use ice recreationally. I have never used it myself, but I hear

that you only need to have one to two shots and you have a habit. In my experience

with heroin, you have to build up a habit.

12. The program is three months, but people can elect to stay longer if they want to. Ice

users in particular may realise 12 weeks is not enough, given the mental health

problems that start coming out with ice users. It is positive when a person wishes to

stay longer, and the research suggests that people who stay longer in support and

treatment will have a better long-term outcome. However, with the lack of beds

available, if one person stays longer it creates a backlog with the waiting list. We

already have a 2-month waiting list. A lot of people stay for 6 months.

13. The effectiveness of the Weigelli program was evaluated by the National Drug and

Alcohol Research Centre, who published a report. We also have to evaluate

effectiveness through KPis set by the funding bodies. There is not much research on

residential services in Australia, let alone Aboriginal residential rehab services. At

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Weigelli, culture is at the centre of everything we do. There is no specific cultural

aspect - rather, the culture is embedded in the program. We have predominantly

Aboriginal staff, and predominantly Aboriginal patients. We also run courses on

Aboriginal language.

14. We don't have any specific program for ice, but there are differences in terms of what

ice users require. They often need a bit more time to detox. A person needs to detox

before they come to rehab, but there is a big bottleneck with detox. There is one in

Orange run by LivesLivedWell, but it only takes seven people, and it is 4.5 hours away

by car. There is another one in Armidale which is 8-9 hours way. Other than that, we

have to send people to the Nepean Inpatient Withdrawal Unit in Sydney for detox.

15. The Aboriginal hub partnership that I coordinate is currently piloting outpatient home

detox services. It works well in the urban areas sometimes, but it does not work too

well in environments where there is ongoing drug use occurring around the person

who is trying to detox. In Walgett, Bourke and Wellington, there may be a number of

dealers living in the area, or the person may be living in a house with a dozen other

people, some of whom are addicts or alcoholics - this makes it really tough for a person

to detox. Some people come to rehab for that very reason - it is safer than living in

their home environment. In my view, the home detox system only works where the

home environment if safe.

16. We are also trying to organise a safe place in each community, as sort of a 'pseudo

detox'. We are trialling one onsite at Orana Haven. It is currently not being funded. No

one is funding detox at the moment. We have people on our waiting list who have not

been able to arrange detox. It is a massive bottleneck and slows everything down. The

closest detox in Orange charges $250 upfront for a person to come in. I do not know

many alcoholics or drug addicts who have a spare $250. A lot of the residents here are

on Centrelink or are homeless, so they have not got access to that sort of money.

17. If we have to arrange transport for a resident, it takes one of our staff members out

of their job for two days, and we need to arrange accommodation for them. But if we

rely on the user themselves to get public transport, quite often they will get lost and

won't make it to the facility.

/ R?:~.:a..--Signature of Norm Henderson

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18. I estimate we would have approximately 70 to 80 people come through our service

per year, depending on the length of time people stay, and of that, approximately 75%

have a problem with ice.

19. People often self-refer, but they can also be referred through a GP, hospital or other

AOD Services.

20. We get a few referrals from Community Corrections, and the intervention services such

as MERIT. At Weigelli at the moment we have 3 people who are on the MERIT program,

but there is only one bed at Weigelli formally allocated to MERIT. We get MERIT clients

from all over the state, and some from the ACT too. I think MERIT does what it is

intended to do - that is, divert people from the correctional system. But the length of

the program being three months is just a starter, especially for those people on ice.

The neurotransmitters in the brain, and the neural pathways are just beginning to

rebuild after three months. For ice, I would recommend a minimum of 9-12 months in

rehab. If you talk to ice users in our program, a lot of them have tried other

interventions before coming to rehab - day programs, counselling etc. Residential

rehab is often the last ditch. Most will tell you three months is not long enough, you

need more. That is, if they are fair dinkum, and not just doing rehab to keep out of

gaol - that happens too.

21. I think some AOD workers are biased against the amphetamine users, because of the

violence they exhibit. People tend to be very wary of working with them, because they

are unpredictable, even after detox. If it's not violence, it's the mood swings.

Sometimes, people in the program are very paranoid and suspicious of people trying

to help them, and it can take a while for that to clear up. Many of the people we see

are from marginalised backgrounds. They might believe they are pretty worthless, and

there's not much out there for them.

22. We have an after-care model, where the community team works with people after they

leave. If someone leaves the program early, the Community team will follow up with

them. Sometimes people are discharged from the program for using drugs or drinking

alcohol. We cannot afford to grant any leniency to any of the residents. We have tried

before, but when we do that, it sets a bad example to the whole cohort. If one has


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break, the rest will plan a break. If someone is discharged from the program early,

they can come back within a month, but they have to go to the back of the waitlist.

23. Funding has always been an issue for rehabs. I understand we can't all get the ideal

amount of funding, but with the current arrangement, it makes it hard to plan for the

future, and keep funding. The government recently increased funding periods to every

three years, which is a good thing and it helps, but when they changed it from annual

to three-yearly funding, they got rid of the annual CPI increase. Five years would be

an ideal amount for funding, with a CPI increase each year. NADA did a workshop in

Sydney, with an independent consultant firm, and they used the DASP tool to work

out they needed 2,000 more beds in NSW to meet demand.

24. In terms of suggestions for improvements to the residential rehabilitation space, we

need more beds, but also more detox facilities. It would also make sense if detox and

rehabs were in the same place. I also think there needs to be more rehab centres

spread around the state. Anything bigger than 20 to 25 beds within a single centre

becomes unmanageable.

25. Another big issue we have is with retaining staff. Currently, the wages for AOD workers

in the NGO sector is $10k lower than the public sector. We train people up from the

local community, and then the LHD offers them more money and they leave. Especially

for young people, $10k can make a big difference. They also have more opportunities

for career progression in the public sector, compared to in an NGO.

26. Out here, in the rural and regional areas of NSW, the is a lot of stigma in the hospital

sector around detoxing people, especially amphetamines users. Because of the media

showing the emergency departments in Sydney being inundated, and the fact that

people in these areas are quite conservative, in small or remote hospitals the local

nurses refuse to do detoxes. They believe it is too dangerous, because ice users are

unpredictable. In small towns where everyone knows each other, the user might have

even committed break and enter on the home premises of one of the nursing staff. In

those circumstances, they will refuse to detox them.

27. If there is no rehab bed available for people once they finish detox, then it is a waste

of time. The user might need to come back in the following week to start detox all

A?;/4-Signature of Norm Henderson .. z> A-w------ Si~ure o~ n s

SCII.004.007.0006


over again. The nurses see it as a revolving door, and a waste of their time. This is

not just a physical addiction - it is an emotional and spiritual addiction.

28. Going back 25-30 years ago, most hospitals were mandated to do detoxes, and had at

least one bed set aside for that purpose. At some point that morphed out of the system.

Now, we cannot get a hospital to do a detox. I brokered a deal at Brewarrina; they will

do a detox as long as we have a bed at Orana Haven for the person when they exit.

Otherwise, the hospital will just say no. Its not the hospital services manager saying

no - they will tell you off the record, it's the nurses that do not want to do them.

29. In towns like Walgett, Bourke and Moree, you cannot get detoxed out there. The

hospitals might do a specialised detox in certain circumstances. It is all dependant on

the nursing staff. I believe there is not enough education on how to do a detox

properly. It is not something the average nursing staff member is taught.

30. The ice problem has been growing for some time now. We are now starting to see the

effects of it very remote communities, such as Peak Hill, a little town outside of Parkes.

We are seeing 12 to 14-year-olds using ice. Also, heroin has come back out into this

area too. Unfortunately, it is hitting the small, predominantly Aboriginal communities.

31. There is a business side to the drug market, which targets certain communities. And

with amphetamines being so easy to make, manufacturers can make it in the boot of

a car and shift their operations on a weekly basis, which makes it very difficult for

police to catch them out in this back country. If there is an ice shortage, people use

fentanyl patches. It is unbelievable what happens in small places in rural NSW. In little

towns were most of the town is on Centrelink, come benefit day, when people leave

their homes they need someone to stay there to guard their tucker otherwise people

might break in and steal it. It is very unsafe in a lot of these communities.

~ -,, Signature of Norm Henderson

Date

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