In 2017 the NADCP conference had a presenter, Brian L. Meyer, Ph.D LCP, who shared a really insightful and some might say provocative presentation titled ‘12 Mistakes Drug Courts make and How to Fix Them’. As always, the NADCP conference generated another great piece of content for our industry and it also provided our team here at One Step with the revelation that we can help drug courts with these common mistakes with our Client Recovery App!
In this blog you will see how the Client Recovery App will help your program avoid the ‘12 Mistakes Drug Courts Make:
#1 – Expecting the defendant to trust you
Building trust with anyone, regardless if they are in a recovery court program or not, takes time. You may be interacting with your client’s once or twice a week in person, but how can you build a trusting relationship with them outside of those interactions?
Likely if you check in on clients during the week it’s to make sure they aren’t violating any requirements of the drug court program. This relationship building between you and your clients will be substantially enhanced with the Client Recovery App – which allows you a contrast avenue of communication, collaboration, and support right to your client’s fingertips. Your client will feel included in the monitoring process, and understand that you both are working together towards a mutual goal – aided by the Client Recovery App.
See features – Chat / News Feed / Resources hub / Check-ins
#2 – Being trauma-informed is not enough
Trauma can cause someone to lose confidence and self-esteem, adding to the stresses that can trigger a client to venture off the recovery path.
The Client Recovery App has built into it multiple layers of positive reinforcement and features to help with self reflection. A counselor may add to a client’s treatment plan requirement daily journaling for example, which can be completed within One Step. A clinician on the team may want to measure anxiety and PTSD levels of their clients with clinical surveys, which can all be completed within the Client Recovery App securely as it is a HIPAA Compliant platform.
Plus providing your client’s with your recovery tool will further show them that you are investing into their recovery and long-term well being, instead of expecting them to stop using simply because they aren’t motivated enough.
See features – recovery counter, motivation picture, motivational quotes, gratitude journal, surveys & outcomes data
#3 – Believing the self-medication hypothesis
Brian L. Meyer makes some great points on this ‘mistake’, he focuses on investigating the trauma which propelled the client to substance abuse instead of simply pinning this behavior on self medication. During the assessment of the client as they join the program, and during the on-going consultations with the client you will want to collect data on the ‘why’ a client is self medicating with a substance, and identify the trauma and life experiences which developed that behavior.
You’ll need a tool to collect and analyze this outcome data, which will be available for you in the One Step Outcomes dashboard.
See features – outcomes dashboard, surveys, forms
#4 – Demanding immediate abstinence from traumatized people
The end goal of any program is always abstinence, but the path to that milestone can be achieved with incremental steps to reduce an influx of trauma from punishment for falling off the horse along the way. If your team decides to take the incremental approach for your client, you will want to share with them a very organized and concise agenda to reach those goals. You can set these agenda and goals up for your clients directly into the Agenda feature of their Client Recovery App. Your client will get reminders, notifications, and motivational messages along the way to help them stay on track and work towards continued progress.
See features – Agenda, goals, notifications
#5 – Ordering all traumatized people into AA/NA
We know AA/NA support meetings work great for millions of people, and they are a proven program. Yet, this may still exclude some of your clients because they may not resonate with the philosophy behind AA/NA. There are other options out there that are also proven programs, like SMART Recovery for example.
The NADCP Best Practices Standards Volume recommends peer support groups, but doesn’t specify the type. With the Meeting Check in feature your client will be able to pick from all of the most popular support groups meetings to meet their support meeting requirements.
See feature – Check-Ins
#6 – Referring to residential treatment as the answer to substance abuse
Whether your client is recommended residential treatment or outpatient treatment you will want your treatment providers to have an effective program. By requesting outcomes data from your treatment provider partners you can see how their program performs for clients post discharge, which would require them to be collecting outcomes data from their programs alumni.
If your treatment providers aren’t currently capturing this data in an accurate manner, you can invite them to utilize the One Step Outcomes dashboard and surveys tools. One Step is meant to be a collaborative platform, providing value for all the different teams within your drug court program.
See features – Outcomes Dashboard, surveys, user account permissions
#7 – Not ordering evidence-based treatments and verifying that clients are receiving them
Similar to number #6 above, you need to verify your treatment providers and provide evidence based treatment, and the only way to do that is through transparency and outcomes data.
Since One Step allows for collaboration between cross-functional teams, you could invite your treatment providers to have a user-account on your One Step admin portal so that they use your Outcomes dashboard and surveys feature to collect the data necessary to verify their effectiveness.
See features – Outcomes Dashboard, surveys, user account permissions
#8 – Not paying attention to pain
Pain will directly affect a client’s mood, which can in turn result in a lapse of focus in their recovery requirements.
Being able to monitor your client’s mood on a constant basis can be accomplished by providing your clients with the Client Recovery App’s ‘mood journal’ feature and surveys in their resource hub. The mood journal feature will capture your clients mood, which can be done easily by your clients on a daily basis, and you can collect surveys on your client’s pain levels through the surveys feature on a cadence of your preference. Want to have your client submit this survey every Friday? No problem, set that cadence up within their agenda feature and they will know when that requirement is due.
See features – mood journal, surveys, agenda
#9 – Not paying attention to to insomnia
Substance abuse will affect your client’s sleeping patterns, therefore insomnia and its negative effects can be afflicting your clients in your programs. Journaling before bed can be a tool your clients can use in the Client Recovery App’s gratitude journal feature to help get all their thoughts down before going to bed to help with getting to sleep quicker. You can also upload any sleep guide videos to your client’s resources feature of their Client Recovery App.
Our survey feature will also provide your team with the ‘Insomnia severity index’ survey as an option you can leverage in your program’s treatment services to collect outcomes data and better address your client’s experience with insomnia issues.
See features – surveys, outcomes dashboard, gratitude journal, resources
#10 – Leaving out families
Since the One Step platform by design is meant for collaboration so that as many team members that are assisting with a client’s recovery can participate and provide value, you can also include family members to that list.
Your One Step Admin Portal gives you visibility into your client’s Client Recovery App activity, therefore providing you with insights to their progress in recovery and accountability. With the user accounts that you give access to the Admin Portal you can limit their access to a specific client, and to only specific data in the portal, making that a great way to give some visibility to a family member who is closely supporting the client as they work through your program.
See features – user account permissions
#11 – Not using trained mentors
Adding trained mentors to the sphere of support for your clients will help add a new team member that will have the utmost trust for your clients.
Some veteran courts are already leveraging the use of mentors in their programs, support groups use sponsors, and Peer Support Specialists are becoming more widespread professionals with training provided in nearly 40 states.
With One Steps collaborative and mobile friendly approach to recovery, you will be able to invite any mentor to your account, assign them their client base, and limit the mentor’s access to only their client’s data.
See features – user account permissions, mentor user role, mobile staff app
#12 – Using derogatory language
Language is important, and its negative effects can be a trigger for a client who is on the edge of their recovery. Avoiding language like “dirty urine”, “addict”, or “violation” can help alleviate the negative emotions that may arise from your clients during conversations.
All throughout the Client Recovery App and the Admin Portal we have thoughtfully curated the language we use to avoid any negative connotations and emotional backlash.
Now this was a long blog post, but a practical and great exercise in thinking through ways to continuously improve your drug court program with our Client Recovery App. If you rather skip reading about these 12 steps outlined in this post, just send me an email and I would be glad to walk you through who the Client Recovery App will bolster your programs best practices!
Contact: info@onestepsoftware.com