Northern Hills Alcohol and Drug Services Executive Director Mary Wood-Fossen says, "It's basically the space issue, I mean, we have no place to go in the facility. We cannot add services in the facility that we're in. We have to have more space."

     And space is what they'll get after the John T. Vucurevich Foundation gave Northern Hills Alcohol and Drug Services a $475,000 grant to purchase the old Badger Clark Elementary School in Sturgis, where all of its services will be consolidated. The agency, which offers prevention services for those who abuse substances, says they have been in their current building for 14 years and it's time to upgrade.

     Wood-Fossen says, "Because we're constrained by space we've not been able to add any programming that we would like to provide, such as family program, adolescent programs, adolescent intensive outpatient program, so that's been the primary reason that we've needed to do this."

     Wood-Fossen says in addition to the move to the old school the agency also plans to build a new inpatient building next door. This will allow Northern Hills Alcohol and Drug Services to better utilize staff and better serve the community in the Northern Hills. Wood-Fossen says, "It's important that we move into this new facility primarily because it's going to allow us to offer additional services to what we're doing now, I mean, we see a need, a strong need to involve families more than they are being involved at this point, we just don't have the space to provide the services."

     One program the agency looks forward to adding is the intensive program for adolescents because there is currently no program like it in the Northern Hills. Wood-Fossen says the school already has four large class rooms they can use and they plan to build offices with more space for the employees. Wood-Fossen says they hope to be in the new building by the end of the year and hope to have the new inpatient building built by the end of May.

Tessa Thomas