There are seven sections to kNOw Notes each time: Opportunities, Network Meetings, Events, NIDA Blending Activities, Evaluation Factoids, Resources and Publications, and FYI. Items will appear for three weeks and then will be removed.

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Date

Posted

SOUTHEAST:  Co-sponsoring the 3rd Annual Behavioral Health Best Practices Conference on March 23-24, 2005.  The conference will be held at the South Carolina Hospital Association Conference Center in Columbia, South Carolina.  Southeast is working in collaboration with the South Carolina Department of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services (DAODAS), South Carolina Department of Mental Health, South Carolina Hospital Association, South Carolina Vocational Rehabilitation Department, Three Rivers Behavioral Health, and Palmetto Health Behavioral Care.  The conference will focus on community teams providing crisis stabilization and programming for persons with co-occurring disorders, meeting annually to network and share resources and knowledge on systems changes.

NORTHEAST:  Co-sponsoring the Addiction Treatment Providers 2005 Annual Conference entitled “Skill Building in Addictions:  A Take-Home Tool Kit”.  This conference will be held in Atlantic City, NJ, on April 25-28, 2005.  The pre-conference workshop on April 25th will be focused on gangs.  Click here for more information or send an email.

PRAIRIELANDS:  Carlton Erickson, PhD, kicked off the second round of the Toolbox Training series in Iowa City on March 11 by presenting “The Addiction Complex Simplified: A New Understanding”.  Toolbox Training, a curriculum based on the SAMHSA Tap #21 and includes NIDA’s Principles of Effective Drug Treatment, is an entry level substance abuse counselor training program made up of 12 modules.  Subsequent modules occur once a month in the form of half-day workshops conducted over the Iowa Community Network (ICN).  This year sites have added in North Dakota with the workshops being presented using the North Dakota (IVAN) Communications Network.  Click here for more information.

MID-AMERICA:  All staff members will be joining Kansas Leadership Institute protégés, mentors, and Kansas SSA office staff for a two-day training retreat in Topeka, KS, March 29-30, 2005, along with 70 other participants.  This two-day training event will introduce participants to behaviors and skills related to coaching, leadership, and motivation using the Enneagram as a tool.  Participants will achieve greater self-awareness and develop better approaches to interpersonal interactions in their organizations, including understanding how their Enneagram type affects their area of influence.  The training will introduce participants to all of the types and help them identify their own type.  It will introduce leadership and organizational issues related to type and explore how those affect the organizational and leadership style of the individual.  Participants will discover strengths and weaknesses in their coaching and leadership styles associated with their type.  The trainer, Ginger Lapid-Bogda, Ph.D., of Bogda & Associates, provides organizational development consulting services to Fortune 500 companies, service organizations, law firms, consulting firms, and nonprofits in the areas of strategic change, high-performing teams, executive coaching, leadership development, diversity, conflict resolution, and organizational applications of the Enneagram.  Ginger Lapid-Bogda, Ph.D., has been consulting with organizations for more than 30 years, teaches at several universities, and is an award-winning speaker and writer.  For more information, contact Debbie Rockford, 816-482-1175.

GULF COAST:  Providing a series of workshops under the Access to Recovery Initiative in Texas.  These sessions are an orientation for local providers to the ATR requirements, how drug courts and providers can link, description of services, and voucher rates.  The ATR Trainings are:  Austin, April 4, 1pm-5pm., and April 5, 8:30am-5pm, San Antonio, April 7, 8:30am-5pm, and April 8, 8:30am-12:00pm, Houston, April 11, 1pm-5pm, and April 12, 8:30am-5:00pm, Ft. Worth, April 14, 8:30am-5pm, and April 15, 8:30am-12:00pm, El Paso, April 19-21, 8:30am-5:00pm both days.

ASI BLENDING TEAM: Meeting scheduled July 19-21, 2004, Reno,  NV. The purpose of the meeting is to develop an online version of the curriculum, How to Make Paperwork Useful: Using the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) in Treatment Care Planning.  Contact Pat Stilen or other members of the ASI Blending Team for more information.

MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEWING BLENDING TEAM: Met November 4-5, 2004, in Washington, DC. Reviewed draft products, made revision recommendations and a work plan to submit content to NIDA for review by January 15, 2005. Formatting and production to follow NIDA review. Contents to include a briefing package, summary of the CTN results, MI Assessment protocol description, supervisor audio tape rating manual, portfolio of supervisor tools for building/maintaining counselor MI skills, demonstration audio tapes and expert ratings in English and Spanish, and a training design for introducing the blending products to administrators and supervisors.

MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEWING BLENDING TEAM: (Northwest Frontier, Caribbean Basin & Hispanic, Mid-Atlantic) met July 15-16 in Portland, OR. Guests included Karl White, CSAT, Tim Condon, NIDA, and Suman Rao, NIDA. Team decided roll-out products will include: briefing package for the ATTC Network, briefing package for SSA Directors and CTP CEOs, description of the MI Assessment intervention, summary of clinical trials results, strategies for building MI competency in counseling and clinical supervision staff, and a supervisor's tool kit for building and maintaining MI skills. Draft package of products due to NIDA January 15, 2005. Next meeting of the blending team will be November 4-5, 2004.

NORTHEAST: Surveyed the New Jersey addictions workforce between October 2003 and September 2004.  A stratified random sample of sixty-six (66) programs was selected for the project, and a 70% response rate was realized for all possible respondents (564/758). Major findings are below:
--Most agency directors had a Bachelor’s degree or higher (76.6%), while most of the staff respondents had some college studies or higher education (i.e., Bachelors and Masters degrees) (85.4%).  The survey underscored the need to increase the certification of counseling staff, a current priority of the State Director’s office.
--Both agency directors and staff reported the same perceptions of how addiction professionals were stigmatized: their associating with persons having substance use disorders; 1) possessing a less formal education and training; 2) having a personal history of substance abuse problems.
--Both agency directors and staff felt that increasing salaries; consistently providing recognition and demonstrating appreciation and providing on-going training will facilitate staff retention.  This finding was supported by the respondents reporting lower job satisfaction regarding their potential for career growth and salary and benefits.
--Agency directors and staff both reported they wished to increase their proficiency in areas related to the treatment of special populations (i.e., co-occurring disorders, gender, LGBT, racial/ethnic specific, adolescent populations).  They also reported wishing to increase their proficiency with special modalities (patient placement, marriage and family therapy, and detoxification) and content areas (drug pharmacology and pharmacotherapy). 
--Agency directors reported needing more information on staff hiring and retention strategies. 
--Overall, staff reported having limited or little access to computers or access to the internet at work.  Agency directors reported accessing drug and alcohol information via the internet mostly from home, while staff reported that they did not use the internet at home for this type of information.

MOUNTAIN WEST:  Is proud to announce the development of a 3 credit-hour academic course in clinical supervision.  The course will be piloted in the fall semester 2005 at the University of Nevada, Reno.  Mountain West intends to sponsor tuition for the clinical supervisors in block grant funded treatment programs participating in the 2005 pilot.  In addition to the traditional classroom setting, an online version of this course will be available in the fall semester of 2006.  For more information, please contact Jennifer Norland, 775-784-1174 x2264.

MID-AMERICA:  Evaluator Tamera Murdock, Ph.D., and Research Associate, Alicia Wendler, M.A., have written an article that has recently been accepted for publication in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment.  The article, entitled “Addiction Counseling Self-Efficacy Scale (ACSES): Development and Initial Validation”, reports on data compiled from two pilot studies, in which over 600 addiction counselors completed a measure to assess their perceived self-efficacy from working with clients.  The scale items were derived from CSAT’s TAP #21 Addiction Counseling Competencies.  Publication will occur in the next several months.  For more information contact Alicia Wendler, 816-482-1199.

PACIFIC SOUTHWEST:  Held an informational meeting on March 17, 2005 on the Network for the Improvement of Addiction Treatment (NIATx).  The meeting was held in Arcadia, CA and 16 outpatient treatment program directors were in attendance. Steve Gallon, Director of Northwest Frontier, co-presented along with Elke Rechberger from Prototypes.  The meeting was held in Arcadia, CA and 16 outpatient treatment program directors were in attendance.  For more information contact Beth Finnerty.