Care Program

Howard County officials will mark the opening next week of Howard House, the first halfway house for recovering addicts in the county, which health and drug treatment officials have been seeking for more than a decade. The renovated facility - on the grounds of Sheppard Pratt at Ellicott City - will serve as a home base for a maximum of 15 men who have completed a higher level of substance abuse treatment and want to rebuild their lives. The halfway house will provide recovering addicts with a program that was identified as a needed service more than a decade ago. "It's adding to a continuum of care in a county that really has no residential treatment at all," said Dr. Penny E. Borenstein, Howard County's health officer.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is awarding $40 million to the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health to expand a program to improve reproductive health around the globe. The 10-year-grant - which officials called the sixth largest in Hopkins' history - will go to the school's Institute for Population and Reproductive Health. The institute trains leaders of reproductive health programs in the developing world, where complications from pregnancy and childbirth are a major cause of disease and death.

CHESAPEAKE CITY - Like the newborn foals she treats, Olga Smolenskaia-Souvorova is seeing Maryland for the first time. Smolenskaia-Souvorova is one of several members of Russia's horse industry who will spend months at horse farms and racetracks across the state this year, learning how the American industry operates and contributing their own ideas. "We'll try to see and learn everything that is going on," said Smolenskaia-Souvorova, an intern from Moscow. "I don't think that six months will be a long time."

Day care providers participating in a state subsidy payment program protested yesterday at the Maryland Child Care Administration, claiming the agency has been late with their checks. The American Home Daycare Association, a national organization with about 200 members in Baltimore, stormed into the agency's downtown Baltimore headquarters and tried to deliver to its executive director, Linda Heisner, a "Turkey of the Year" award. About 20 protesters eventually were granted a 20-minute meeting with state officials -- including Heisner's boss, Calvin Street, who is deputy secretary for programs.

NEW FREEDOM, Pa. - She calls him "Junior." He calls her "My Little Spoiled Brat." When big brother Daniel, 14, and his little sister, Michelle, 11, get together, they joke, tease and even roughhouse. However, unlike a lot of siblings, they rarely argue. Then again, Daniel and Michelle, who are both foster children in the care of different families, hardly ever see one another. She lives in Baltimore and doesn't have his address. He lives in Silver Spring and doesn't know her phone number.

City officials restored money for a child-care program in next year's proposed city budget yesterday, just in time for a public hearing that drew dozens of parents and disabled children to City Hall to protest its anticipated demise. "Taxpayer's Night" opened with an announcement that the program, which serves 115 children, would not be eliminated in fiscal 2003, which begins July 1. Parents broke into applause, but some found it hard to believe the news delivered by Councilman Nicholas C. D'Adamo Jr., the Southeast Baltimore Democrat who heads the Budget and Appropriations Committee.

Baltimore County has formed a partnership to provide health care to some of the estimated 100,000 county residents who don't have insurance. "One in seven people in Baltimore County are uninsured, and these are people who work," said Dr. Michelle A. Leverett, the county's health officer. Under the program, announced this week, 300 residents would pay $25 a month for health coverage through the health maintenance organization Kaiser Permanente. The fee covers a small portion of what the HMO typically charges for insurance.

Maryland set aside $9.4 million over the past two years to provide drug treatment for welfare recipients and new mothers, but only a fraction of the money has been spent for that purpose, records show.Less than 15 percent of the money -- $1.3 million -- has been used for drug treatment. Most of the rest has paid for job training, foster care and other social service programs.Maryland Department of Human Resources officials say it has been harder than expected to find people in the two targeted groups willing to enter treatment.

WASHINGTON -- At an ice-breaking budget summit today, President Clinton and congressional leaders are expected to begin to try to figure out how to repair the damage they did two years ago to Medicare.As part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, changes in the popular health care program for the elderly and disabled slashed Medicare spending almost twice as deeply as anticipated -- producing $200 billion over five years and much of what is now projected as the federal budget surplus.The squeeze is being felt throughout the health care system -- from hospitals to doctors, nursing homes, home health care agencies, managed-care insurance plans and manufacturers of medical equipment.

A GRANDPARENT who saw a need for a program to support grandparents and other caregivers of children other than their own is celebrating a landmark.The YWCA-sponsored summer Kindership Care program at Park Elementary School has developed into a full-scale, year-round program. The YWCA started the program a year ago in Annapolis and West County. A branch opened last April at the Harundale Presbyterian Church, and a new one is starting in Freetown.Frances Hullett, a former addiction counselor at North County Hospital, leads the program at Park.