San Luis Obispo County Behavioral Health, Drug and Alcohol Services

San Luis Obispo, CA

A partnership among San Luis Obispo County's Drug and Alcohol Services (DAS), the Superior Court of San Luis Obispo, the Department of Social Services, the Department of Probation, one residential treatment provider and Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) seeks to implement an expanded treatment program for children (ages 0 – 17) within the existing Dependency Drug Court (DDC). This partnership will serve misdemeanor and felony drug offenders who also have Child Welfare Services (CWS) cases in San Luis Obispo County, California with methamphetamine addiction. The current Dependency Drug Court, which focuses on family functioning and reunification was established in January, 2005 and has excellent outcome results. However, the focus has been on parents with children ages 0 – 3 because of the associated strict legal time limits for reunification for infants and young children.

Therefore if funded, the expansion of services to children affected by methamphetamine in families participating in our Dependency Drug Court will provide much needed case management, in-home and outpatient behavioral health treatment services, and a family based cognitive behavioral group curriculum known as Celebrating Families! In addition, Court Appointed Special Advocates will provide one-on-one mentors to the children, also to be provided is tutoring, incentives, and activities for 60 new children per year, for a total of 240 children over the four year grant period. The new specialized children's services that will be available with this funding include:

• Celebrating Families! (Cognitive Behavioral Support Group Curriculum)
• Court Appointed Special Advocates
• Outpatient and In-home behavioral health counseling interventions
• Services Coordination
• Case management services to interface and coordinate with a variety of services including school services, developmental services, primary care.

When successful, children participants in the DDC will have improved the quality of their lives, to reduce the impacts of family methamphetamine addiction, and to increase overall health and well-being of the children. Parent participants in the DDC will establish a healthy family functioning environment, improve the quality of the family communications, and to break the cycle of addiction in families. Overall, there will be an increase in the rate of completion for the Dependency Drug Court, and a reduction in the length of time the child is in foster care.