Wednesday, April 30, 2025
4/30/2025
Miami-Dade County Dependency Drug Court Response to Family Treatment Needs Expansion Project - In collaboration with Miami-Dade County, the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida’s Dependency Drug Court (DDC) and its partner, the Family Resource Center of South Florida, Inc., propose to implement a family focused, trauma informed service delivery and to offer family therapy to strengthen the families involved in the DDC. The goal of the proposed project is to improve the current infrastructure by providing evidence-based family intervention and a trauma informed community of care, thereby increasing the resources available to DDC participants and their children. The partnership is submitting a grant request to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), in the amount of $2,000,000 to facilitate the envisioned initiative. Need for Proposed Project and Planned Services: A significant volume of research indicates that individuals who abuse drugs or alcohol have had a history of exposure to trauma. For parents engaged in the dependency system, the problem is compounded as the permanency, safety and wellbeing of children are brought to the forefront. Parents are more likely to recover and successfully reunify with their children when they have access to trauma informed care. Additionally, research has shown family support to be related to positive treatment outcomes and indicates that such support can influence recovery through motivation to change. Expanding the family sessions beyond the Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) conjoint sessions is expected to improve treatment outcomes. The need to not only strengthen the parent /child relationship, but also for the parents to receive increased family emotional and practical assistance to support parent sobriety and healthy parenting has been highlighted. If awarded by SAMHSA, the Court will use the five-year grant to expand and enhance the capacity of the local child welfare continuum of care by: (1) Per year, referring 35 parents of the DDC to family therapy, and up to 25 children to therapists trained in early childhood development and cognitive behavioral therapy for children who will receive TF-CBT; (2) Training the FRC clinical supervisor as well as the therapists on providing Multidimensional Family Therapy, thereby creating a referral source dually competent to work with both parents and children individually as well as providing family therapy; (3) Referring parents involved in DDC to receive individual Seeking Safety treatment to those who are not able to access the service within the community; and (4) Developing proficiency of the drug court multi-disciplinary team by training in the principles of trauma informed care and positive family systems including the presiding judge, program coordinator, caseworkers, prosecuting and defense attorneys while strengthening the bridge of communication between providers to ensure the best approach is taken, promoting interagency information sharing. The proposed project targets participants of the (DDC), a family drug treatment court within the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida. The DDC currently serves parents named in new dependency petitions with substance abuse allegations who have a case plan goal of reunification with their children. In comparison to the county’s population, DDC participants are overwhelmingly female (87%), and more than half (60%) are between the ages of 18 and 34. The client racial/ethnic composition is White (71%), Black or African American (23%), Multi-racial (5%), Other (0.4%), and Asian (0.6%), with 67% of clients within these groups identifying as Hispanic or Latino. The socioeconomic status of DDC participants is significantly lower than the general County. Expected target, including adults and children to be served- 300 during the five (5) year award period (based on number of intakes to be entered in SPARS, however, the actual number of people served would be higher given that family therapy will involve additional supports).
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).