The goals of the Catholic Charities Targeted Capacity Expansion Program are to serve 100 unduplicated court-mandated adults annually, whose health and lives are negatively impacted by substance use disorders. Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami, Inc. is proposing to serve court mandated adults from Miami-Dade County with substance use disorders by expanding our current outpatient services at St. Luke’s Center for Alcohol and Substance Abuse to include Medication Assisted Treatment, in addition to group and individual therapy, weekly urine testing, and recovery coaching. Catholic Charities will also enhance our residential services at St. Luke’s to include case management and care coordination to provide a comprehensive approach to comprise primary care coordination, life skills training for job readiness, mental health services when indicated, Medication Assisted Treatment when applicable and ultimately expanded discharge planning for court-ordered adults in Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe Counties.
Over the three (3) years of these Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration resources, 300 court-mandated adults will be screened and assessed with appropriate evidence-based tools (ASAM, Clinical Opiate Withdrawal Scale, Drug Abuse Screening Test, Texas Christian University Trauma Form) to assure they are receiving the appropriate treatment approaches for substance use disorder and/or mental health disorders. St. Luke’s residential and outpatient programs utilize Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, Living in Balance and Twelve Step Facilitation. These treatment modalities all are appropriate for the high-risk population this program is targeted to serve.
For this project, St. Luke’s will continue to partner with Miami Beach Community Health Center who provides quality, primary care and outpatient services to uninsured and underinsured residents; and Miami-Dade Adult Health Education Center, who works in every county of the state to help reduce the use of tobacco by delivering effective evidence-based tobacco cessation services for those addicted to nicotine.
Collaborating with the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida, Adult Drug Court will be the priority for this special project due to the rising need of substance use and mental health disorder treatment and recovery supports reported in justice involved individuals entering the court system. This population has shown to require longer residential treatment stays and more intense outpatient monitoring which St. Luke’s is qualified to deliver given their 40+ years of providing this expertise as a fully accredited (by the Council on Accreditation) facility.