What Is the Sobriety, Treatment, and Reducing Trauma (START) Program?
Ohio’s Sobriety, Treatment, and Reducing Trauma (START) program is led by children services in an effort to end the cycle of parental substance use and child maltreatment. This intervention program brings together a team of caseworkers, behavioral health specialists, mentors, courts, and other community organizations who are best suited to helping families deal with these two concurrent problems. The combined efforts of these collaborative, integrated systems of care work to stabilize families and increase safety in the home.
What does the START program involve?
The START program focuses on a few key elements and strategies:
- Identifying affected families
- Providing access to addiction treatment
- Providing peer support to increase engagement
- Offering family-centered services to strengthen family relationships
- Overseeing interactions between parents and children
- Shouldering responsibility for program outcomes
- Collaborating with various service providers and the judicial system
Parents can take advantage of quick access to proven substance use disorder (SUD) treatment, along with other services, including help with mental health and trauma. Children will also receive assistance from a child services worker with a focus on promoting family attachment, trauma recovery, and supporting mental and emotional development.
Comprehensive Approach
The Ohio START program embraces a wraparound approach for at-risk families. As part of this process, a team of individuals who are relevant to the family’s life work together to develop a customized plan for care. They then help to implement the plan, monitor for effectiveness, and do what’s necessary to build success over time. A key ingredient in a wraparound approach is that the perspectives of the family and children drive the decisions. This helps to ensure that it will be followed faithfully and make a positive difference in their lives. Families maintain contact with their team, who monitors their progress and revises any program or treatment to best meet their needs.
Family Peer Mentor
A Family Peer Mentor will help the family with real-world, first-hand advice. Mentors are parents who have also experienced and overcome addiction, and now aid families that are working toward recovery. They can help to connect families under drug and alcohol addiction treatment with vital social services and aids, including financial and food assistance programs, as well as organizations that can help a family meet housing, transportation, and child care needs. Together, these various forms of therapy, treatment, and general aid can create a holistic plan for healthier living and functioning for the family as a whole.
How does the START program help families?
Stabilization and recovery are the ultimate goals of the Ohio START program. With the right methods in place and invested participation by the family, children can live abuse-free and parents can live addiction-free lives. Community partners are part of the mix to provide a full wraparound approach and all the support the family needs to succeed. The Lake Area Recovery Center believes in families, and aims to help families through programs like these at our addiction treatment centers in Ohio while remaining compassionate, understanding, and holding out hope for recovery.
Lake Area Recovery Center Can Help Your Family
At Lake Area Recovery Center, we understand that overcoming harmful behaviors and habits can be challenging. But we also know that recovery and growth are possible. You don’t have to do it all on your own. Our Ohio addiction recovery center team is ready to help you.
If substance use is making it difficult to care for your family and you would like to work toward a better future, reach out to our team to learn more about the Sobriety, Treatment, and Reducing Trauma (START) program, or to get more information about our addiction treatment center and drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers in Ohio.