Interior Community Services is raising the alarm over a lack of treatment options for homeless youth in Kamloops struggling with mental health and addiction issues.

Director of Youth and Clinical Services Nicole Arnould says while they are distributing naloxone to homeless addicted youth there are serious roadblocks in long term care.

“We also have been fairly aggressive to get them to treatment across the province,” she said. “One of the challenges is that residential treatment for youth, we have only 22 beds that are available for non-adjudicated youth in the province of B.C.”

“Access to get our kids there is tremendously difficult to transport them to Surrey or Keremeos, which are our closest access points.”

Arnould says there needs to be a youth-specific detox centre in Kamloops along with some residential treatment beds.

With the lack of local resources for non-adjudicated youth, it essentially means those who have criminal convictions have easier access to care.