Backseat driving by charity drug fund raisers helped destroy Fair Havens - the Island's only residential treatment for women - claims a former National Drugs Commission (NDC) employee.

And former NDC treatment coordinator John Scott said meddling by the Council Partners Charitable Trust (CPCT) has hampered other agencies as they seek to improve.

His views were echoed by other insiders who said the power struggle between the CPCT and the NDC over who controls Bermuda's drug policy was harming clients.

Currently the Fair Havens board is deciding what to do with its 18-bed facility in Smith's after closing it because of low numbers and then re-opening it after a storm of controversy.

Mr. Scott said Fair Havens funders the CPCT had ignored warnings such a large facility wasn't needed.

He said: "I have never seen such a lack of taking responsibility in all my life on both the parts of Fair Havens and CPTC.

"Fair Havens has tried to shift the blame on everyone and everything, especially the clients of the service, for its imminent demise.

"Over a year ago I sat with the treatment providers on the Island, with a recognised projection model that clearly showed that Fair Havens was on the wrong course in its plans to treat women.

"It just didn't make sense to have 18 beds designated for residential treatment.

"According to the model they would never have 18 beds occupied at one time, and probably at most would have about five."

Another former colleague echoed this view. The source said: "We advised 18 beds was far too many but the CPCT had another view."

Mr. Scott went on: "The only option they would have would be to keep women longer then necessary.

"Now it's a case of let's blame the clients - the programme's too tough for them, they were non co-operative etc.

"But addiction treatment isn't an easy business and those are expected behaviours and should be dealt with therapeutically not punitively.

"Let's not even think of adapting treatment to meet the special needs of Bermudian women and instead rigidly adhere to a male devised USA model and totally ignore the Best Practises for the Treatment of Women Document that was also given to them.

Mr. Scott said he clearly remembered Anne Vance, the former Fair Havens Executive director, who left last month as saying Fair Havens didn't want women from Drug Court and ATI in its programme.

He said: "Bermudian women in need who are the losers again.

"I believe the CPCT colluded/created this mess by having their own agenda, interfering in programme direction and blocking any attempt at co-ordination of services by the NDC."

Mr. Scott denied claims the NDC had not moved to improve standards in all the Island's agencies but said the NDC team had given a clear path with four documents - The Projection Model for Bermuda, Standards for Accreditation, Best Practices for the Treatment of Women and the Bermuda's National Treatment Direction Document.

He said all four were distributed to all of the addiction agencies on the Island and therefore should be publicly available.

He said: "The CPCT picked a path of moving against all available advice and forward with their own agenda."

However last night CPCT executive director Gordon Johnson hit back. "If that information exists it should be produced by the NDC," he said.

He said it should be used to make sure there was value for money.

Mr. Scott, who left the NDC in March 2002 to head back to Canada, said whatever model the NDC put forward was never good enough for the CPCT and that Mr. Johnson had even questioned research done by former NDC researcher Julie Dunstan, who had a PhD in research.

He said he didn't have an axe to grind: "I had nothing to gain. I had made my reputation with 30 years in addiction treatment.

"I came to Bermuda to do a job but it didn't fit in with people's political agenda's."

One drug insider said: "The CPCT is really governing programmes and taking decisions but they don't have the expertise to make those decisions."

She said the NDC had tried to work with agencies but the CPCT was trying to get the agencies to run before they could crawl.

"The CPCT would arbitrarily decide this or that agency wasn't up to scratch.

"They might be heading in the right direction but they would suddenly find the rug pulled from under them and set them up for a fall.

"The agencies had a lot of work to do and they recognised that. But for some odd reason they picked on Focus to be singled out and have its funds removed.

"From an organisation view we couldn't understand it. There had to be another reason - either personal or political."

She said the Island was now gripped in a power struggle between the NDC and the CPCT and added that a leaked report suggesting the CPCT take over from the NDC was laughable.

"You get a foreign consultant who will spout back what the people who paid for the report want to hear. It's a farce. I really feel for the clients."

Another drug professional still working in Bermuda's system said the CPCT was like a child out of control and was wrecking groundwork laid at the NDC to improve treatment standards.

He said the CPCT was using information provided by treatment agencies to discredit those agencies who were making an honest effort to improve.

In response Mr. Johnson said: "All this speaks to the need to establish standards of care, best practices, transparency, accountability, so we can see how energy and dollars create outcomes.

"We need to remove the politics and personalities from the system so services desperately needed by our community can be rendered."