ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, August 14, 1996 TAG: 9608140052
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
SHIPS AT SEA, which will be based aboard the USS Yosemite, helps provide recovering substance abusers with training to find and hold good jobs.
A decommissioned Navy warship will be the new home of a program that helps men recover from drug- and alcohol-abuse problems.
Ships at Sea marked the opening Saturday of its new Computer and Character Development School with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. For now, the school is limited to a few computer classrooms in a converted warehouse.
But it will be housed in the destroyer tender USS Yosemite once a pier can be found. The school will serve as many as 500 recovering substance abusers a year.
``In this state and in other states, we can successfully provide detoxification and treatment for a substance abuser,'' said Linda Jennings, executive director and founder of the Ships at Sea program. ``The problem is, once he is detoxified, we send him out into the streets without an education, without vocational training and without character development.''
Ships at Sea is a privately run program using public funds and community donations and support. It helps provide recovering substance abusers with training to find and hold good jobs.
For now the program is operating on a $400,000 Labor Department grant. It has already won congressional approval to take over the Yosemite, which was decommissioned in 1993.
``We would bring men on board for a full year and provide general-equivalency diplomas, vocational training, character development, job placement and follow-up services,'' Jennings said.
Unlike a government program, Ships at Sea has a strong religious foundation.
``We're glad to see that it is a faith-based program,'' said Timothy Kelly, commissioner of the Virginia Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services. He said such programs are needed to instill a moral compass in those who have headed down the wrong roads.
The Navy has left all facilities in place on the ship - everything from sheet-metal shops to the barber shop.
It will cost about $4 million to ready the ship and get it through its first year of operation, then $2 million or so annually to run the program, Jennings said.
The money is there, she said, and the program is a bargain, considering the public costs of not converting people with substance-abuse problems from lives of drugs, crime and social dependency to self-sufficiency.
The program's main obstacle: finding a place to dock the ship.
LENGTH: Medium: 55 linesby CNB