Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware has been among the hardest hit states by the opioid crisis, with high numbers of overdose deaths in recent years. The state has a fund of money, derived from settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors, to address the crisis. But key decision makers appear to disagree on how to use it.
As the sun set on a frigid January night, Teresa Campbell Harris prepared as dozens of tired men filed into the basement of the People’s Church of Dover, just a few blocks from Legislative Hall.
They hoped to find a warm meal or maybe a bed. Harris hoped that some were also there to get help for their addictions.
As the men filed in, she recognized many faces – including some that she had tried to steer toward drug treatment in the past. But time and again, she said people end up right back in the shelter.
“It’s devastating to see it happen over and over and over again,” she said.
Campbell Harris said one reason stands out for why people suffering from addiction fail to get clean. Too often those seeking out rehab can’t get a bed at the nearby Delaware facility, she said.
Her critique echoes those from other local advocates, who have called on Delaware’s government to build a state-run rehab facility. But, so far, state officials in charge of a pool of money used for addiction treatment have not collectively decided if they would take such an ambitious step.
Recently, advocates told Spotlight Delaware that referring people to out-of-state rehab facilities is often ineffective because it takes patients out of a pipeline of assistance within Delaware. In particular, an out-of-state facility may not connect someone to sober-living housing within Delaware after they leave rehab.
That, in turn, leaves many at risk of homelessness and prone to relapse, one treatment manager said.
Calls for a new treatment facility within Delaware were amplified last month when a bipartisan group of lawmakers told Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings that a large portion of the state’s $250 million fund designed to ease the opioid crisis should be used to construct a statewide rehab center.
When responding to the lawmakers during a hearing of the state’s principal budget committee, Jennings, who serves as co-chair of the Prescription Opioid Settlement Distribution Commission, did not say whether she would commit to advocating for such an endeavor.
She did say she would bring lawmakers’ concerns back to the commission, which distributes money previously secured from state settlements with prescription opioid makers and distributors.
While Jennings did not commit to the proposal, her new co-chair on the opioid commission Joanna Champney has pushed back against calls for a new treatment facility in the state. During an interview with Spotlight Delaware last month, she said such new rehab center would be “a massive state fiscal commitment.”
“And budgetarily, it really makes more sense for us to utilize the community-based services that already exist,” Champney said.
‘Always full’
There is one, 30-day in-patient addiction treatment facility in Delaware. There are several others nearby, in Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey.
For some of the most vulnerable people battling addiction, an inpatient stay at a facility is usually the second step in treatment – often following a weeklong stint in a detox facility.
But the state’s sole treatment facility in Milford usually has a waitlist. Some say that wait exacerbates the risk of a relapse after detox, or gives someone time to change their mind about treatment.
Advocates have been calling for more in-state, in-patient drug treatment beds for at least a decade.
In 2014, another treatment facility, called the Gateway Foundation, served as the state’s lone provider of long-term residential treatment, according to a story in the News Journal then.
And like today, a waitlist existed at that state-funded facility, causing some patients to leave Delaware for treatment.
During the pandemic, the Gateway Foundation closed its Delaware rehab, creating a new treatment void. In 2021, Banyan Treatment Center filled the gap by opening a new 104-bed private facility in Milford. The move sparked hope among community advocates that fewer people would have to leave Delaware for treatment.
Five years later, waitlists remain a struggle, according to Angela Lloyd, an admissions manager at the Banyan center.
“We are always full,” she said.
While she said the center can get through the waitlist quickly, Lloyd said she believes another option for treatment in New Castle County would help alleviate some of the pressure and limit the amount of people going out of state.
She said that when someone receives treatment in another state, it doesn’t guarantee that they will get connected with resources in Delaware for the next part of their treatment plan.
Domenica Personti, CEO of the recovery organization Impact Life, says that a long-term treatment stay can bring high costs to people without means.
Personti, who has worked in addiction recovery for more than 25 years, said many people can’t afford to leave work or their children for a month. Those who can often have good insurance that covers a trip out of state, she said.
While a massive new rehab center may not be necessary due to Delaware’s size, Personti said expansion of the state’s current treatment options may be a more viable solution.
“What you don’t want is a large facility with beds that are empty, because you have to pay staff either way,” Personti said.
The state estimates that 333 people in Delaware died of drug overdoses in 2024. The official number will be reported later in the year. If the estimate holds, it would be a sharp decrease from the year before when 527 people died from overdoses.
State officials have said that overdoses, in general, have not declined, and attributed the decrease in deaths to a prevalence of overdose reversing drugs. They also have noted that fatal overdoses increased in Black and Brown communities in recent years.
A new proposal
Kenneth McLaughlin has been chief of the Ocean View Police Department since 2001 — and he’s been a cop longer than that. Since his early days in law enforcement, he’s been entrenched in southern Delaware drug epidemics.
McLaughlin said his substance abuse work began in the 1990s when he said crack cocaine devastated Selbyville.
“It was just insane how many people were impacted by this in such a short period of time,” he said.
Then opioids hit in the early 2000s and again he saw how people were ensnared by addiction. A now retired member of the Prescription Opioid Settlement Distribution Commission, McLaughlin has been a vocal proponent of more treatment in Delaware.
One idea McLaughlin shared with other members of the commission was funding a new 100-bed, inpatient treatment facility in Delaware. The proposal estimates the cost of the facility at $38 million.
Fellow members of the state opioid commission pushed back against McLaughlin’s idea, which he said comes from years of talking to people with addiction. They cited concerns around how to manage a facility of that size, he said.
“I didn’t make this up, it’s not Ken McLaughlin’s idea,” he said. “This is what I’m hearing from the people that are on the streets that are saying this is what they need.”
McLaughlin’s proposed treatment center would have space for mental health providers, health care, as well as other amenities for those admitted into the facility. Management of the facility would fall on the state or a “state-approved” organization, according to his proposal, which he has distributed to voting members of the opioid commission.
It would exclusively serve people with opioid addiction, and target those can’t afford private treatment or who lack insurance.
He said he proposed the facility because he saw money from the commission going out to smaller initiatives with harder-to-track goals. Instead, he believes the funds would be better suited in long-term investments that could be built up and down the state.
“If we built that facility, it’ll be standing there 50 years from now,” McLauglin said. “If we keep doling out the money the way we’re doling it out, that money is going to come and go.”
Does Delaware need something new?
While some in the community are pushing for larger and longer-term treatment facilities, the state’s leading substance abuse director said the length of stay isn’t always what makes treatment successful.
Champney Jennings’ opioid commission co-chair and director of the Delaware Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health – added that there are vacancies at “all levels of care,” and said that keeping people engaged for the long-haul is difficult.
“It really is a misnomer that we don’t have treatment,” Champney said. “We do, and we have navigation help for people, too.”
Champney said the state bases the intensity of treatment on several factors that produce a score to determine the level of care someone needs.
To figure out how someone scores on the spectrum, Champney said people must get a first clinical assessment. Those scores are an important piece in creating a treatment plan, and placing someone into the pipeline of inpatient to outpatient services.
She further said there are no plans at the moment for the state to run its own long-term treatment facility.
Among the Delaware legislators who had pressed Jennings at last month’s budget hearing was Sen. Stephanie Hansen (D-Middletown), who said the conversation around a new treatment center is a “drum beat” that legislators hear repeatedly.
She said that drum beat will continue until Delaware has a “flagship facility” where the state can invest in long-term recovery.
“We’ve got many different places, many different facilities all doing their part in their corner of the world,” she said. “And until people know that we have a flagship facility, they’re not going to think that we’re doing anything.”
One new 40-bed treatment center opened last week in Wilmington, but it doesn’t offer the same level of care as an industry-standard, 30-day, inpatient facility.
The new center, run by Limen Recovery and Wellness, opened last week off North Washington Street.
In 2023, it had received a $300,000 grant from the opioid commission.
The post A Delaware drug rehab is ‘always full.’ Should the state build another? appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.