Last Updated: December 2014
Author: Alcohol & Drug Abuse Programs, Vermont Department of Health
Individuals with addiction have complex lives. There is also shame associated with the disease of addiction and can result in isolation for those struggling. This isolation prevents people from accessing positive supports that are needed to recover from addiction. Socials supports include non-professional or peer-driven organizations devoted to helping individuals who have addiction related problems and include self-help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA), supported housing, recovery coaching, faith-based services, after-school activities, as well as substance-free gathering places such as the recovery centers. The Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs (ADAP) collects information about the level of social supports at both treatment admission and discharge and has set a goal of increasing the level of social supports at discharge over that at admission. Current data indicates that 65% of those receiving outpatient and Medication Assisted Therapies (MAT) in Vermont have no social supports on admission. Only 45% of the population has social supports on discharge.
ADAP Preferred Providers
Recovery Centers
Faith Based Community
Housing Community
ADAP Staff
Social Supports must match the need of the individual and be available on a timely basis. They must be appropriate and supportive to the individual's needs and wants.Supports must align with the stage of recovery and be population specific. For instance, women may have different social support needs than men. Those with trauma in their lives may need unique supports. Adolescent social supports must be aligned with the client's developmental stage.
Providers focus on quality improvement processes such as NIATx (http://www.niatx.net/) to determine the root causes of low change in social support between admission and discharge.
Together these performance measures focus on whether Vermonters are
better off as a result of the Health Department's Alcohol & Drug
Abuse Program. They do so by looking at the quality and efficiency of
these programs and services. This performance measure is important because it measures if Vermonters are BETTER OFF; it measures quantity and quality of program effect.
Reporting is dependent on timely reporting by providers as measures cannot be calculated until data has been received and processed. This may result in delayed scorecard updates.