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Service up and running to lure Asian substance abusers
Wednesday, 19 April 2006.
Originally from Eastern Courier article Wednesday, 8 February 2006
By Heather McCracken, reporter. Photo by Jason Dorday.
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| New team: Rebecca Zhang and Benjamin Liu, clinicians for a new Asian drug and alcohol service. |
A new alcohol and drug counselling service aims to encourage more Asian people to seek help for substance abuse.
The programme's two Asian counsellors hope to overcome problems with language and culture. The free service is based at the Community Alcohol and Drug Service in Panmure.
Clinical team leader Greg Asplin says a relatively small number of Asians seek help for drug or alcohol use. "It suggests there is a high number out there who are not being serviced," he says. Poor English, and not knowing where to go for help, are the main barriers for new migrants.
The east Auckland team provides counselling in Mandarin and Taiwanese, but have access to counsellors who speak other languages as well. "We're trying to remove the barrier of language as much as possible."
Mr Asplin says he wants to make the service available across the Auckland region. Clients can contract the service by phone or email, visit in person, or be referred by a doctor. "And we hope to be quite mobile, and be able to get out into the community," he says.
Clinician Rebecca Zhang says a new email counselling service designed to appeal to young people in particular. Youth make up a high proportion of Asians clients already in counselling. "Asian people don't seem to search out help when they've got alcohol and drug problems and they don't feel very comfortable seeing the counsellor face to face," she says.
The Community Alcohol and Drug Service also has Maori, Pacific, gay and lesbian, and youth programmes.
Phone (Auckland): 845-1818. Chinese speakers phone: 442-3232.
