Contributing to Community Recovery

isn’t any mechanism in place to determine whether these programs work,” said Robert Boston, assis- tant director of communications for Americans United for Separa- tion of Church and State (Ameri- cans United), a civil liberties or- ganization which has litigated against some of the FBO awards. “And something that concerns me is that the groups running these programs reject the disease model — they believe that addiction is the result of a personal failing, or a refusal to embrace the right ver- sion of Christianity.”

The problem, said Boston, isn’t that the groups exist — it’s that they are funded with tax dollars. It’s the programs that try to change behav- ior that are the most problematic, said Boston.

But funding is still going out, unless there is litigation and there are examples of religious promo- tion, said Boston. “In the area of treatment and recovery, there hasn’t been a hard look at evidence and religious groups,” said Boston. “The one thing we do see is these reli- gious groups will make these as- tounding claims and have no objec- tive evidence.”

Faith-based activities required Born Again Ministries, an FBO

based in Travis County, Texas, provides housing and relapse pre- vention groups. “Residents that came into our homes and agreed

to live there are required to attend our faith-based activities,” said di- rector Don Grant. However, he said these activities were “option- al,” in that residents could leave if they didn’t participate. “They don’t have to do the faith-based thing, and if they don’t, then they don’t have to stay here.”

Grant discontinued his ATR grant last year because he could not comply with the access require- ments under the Americans with Disabilities act, he said. “They came in and said we had to do ADA things with ramps, widening doors, and changing the bathrooms,” he said. “That was an expense we couldn’t afford.”

But Born Again Ministries is still functioning. “We have a fee sched- ule for room and board,” said Grant, whose program existed prior to the ATR program. “We still have clients

that were funded by ATR, and after the contract was up, we got them jobs,” he said. “We’re setting up small businesses, setting up a clean- ing company,” he said.

The program is nondenomina- tional, said Grant. “We do spiritual growth and biblical-based devel- opment.”

Outcome evaluations not done Access to Recovery has yet to

conduct outcome evaluations. A total of $198 million in awards were made through fiscal year 2005, ac- cording to the GAO report. The pro- gram started in 2004.

For a copy of the report, “Faith- Based and Community Initiative: Improvements in Monitoring Grantees and Measuring Perfor- mance Could Enhance Accountabil- ity,” go to www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/ getrpt?GAO-06-616. •

August 21, 2006 Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly 5

A Wiley Periodicals, Inc. publication www.interscience.wiley.comAlcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly DOI: 10.1002/adaw

Reform Act of 2006 (S 3721), would rename and reorganize the FEMA as the U.S. Emergency Management Au- thority (USEMA). Under S3721, the new USEMA would be able to direct funds to evacuees from disasters for substance abuse services.

Under current law, there is no mention of substance abuse; it would fall under the mental health

Before Congress left for August vacation, two committees filed im- portant legislation reforming the federal Stafford Act (the law govern- ing disaster response) that would benefit substance abuse treatment.

Under the proposed revision, the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act would be amended by adding “sub- stance abuse” – so that federal dis-

aster relief funds could be used for substance abuse counseling, as well as mental health counseling.

One problem with the current Stafford Act is that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) can hold up requests for substance abuse counselors, be- cause this isn’t written into the law.

The Senate bill, known as the Post Katrina Emergency Management

Substance abuse counseling written into federal disaster response bill

What is an FBO?

The GAO report showed that even the definition of a faith-based organi- zation (FBO) is hard to come by — a real sticking point for federal audi- tors who are looking at millions of dollars worth of new grant programs.

From the report: Importantly, there are no criteria for what constitutes a faith-based

organization that all agencies must use to identify FBOs, and FBOs are

not required to self-identify, leaving individual agencies and states to de-

termine which organizations are faith-based. Determining what elements

constitute an FBO is challenging.

Continues on next page

mainstream addiction treatment cen- ters have decided to serve this niche in isolation from other addictions. Yet the idea of treating Internet ad- diction recently took hold in China, which in 2005 saw the opening of its first officially licensed and govern- ment-owned clinic for Internet ad-

Internet use in which individuals exhibited a loss of control, detri- mental effects on personal relation- ships, and an inability to stop de- spite negative consequences. In 1996, the American Psychological Association (APA) annual confer-

ence featured the unveiling of a sur- vey in which about 80 percent of 496 heavy Internet users issued re- sponses that appeared to qualify them as Internet addicts.

Formal treatment services for this group are still available mainly from individual clinicians, as few

Internet from page 1

6 Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly August 21, 2006

It is illegal under federal copyright law to reproduce this publication or any portion of it without the publisher’s permission Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly DOI: 10.1002/adaw

posed legislation when it returns in September. The fact that it’s on the table is regarded as a victory al- ready: Ever since the Gulf coast hur- ricanes of last year, the substance abuse treatment community has been trying to get this wording into disaster legislation. •

provisions. That doesn’t mean sub- stance abuse services can’t be pro- vided, but it means that they might have to be justified every step of the way, sources say. Last year, re- quests were assistance were some- times turned down by FEMA; hav- ing substance abuse counseling specified in the Stafford Act would make that less likely.

Under the proposed legislation, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration would be required to: (1) Conduct a survey of mental

health or substance abuse serv- ices and any applicable sup- port services available to indi- viduals affected by major disas- ters and to emergency re- sponse providers responding to major disasters; and

(2) Develop a strategy for the ade- quate provision of mental health and substance abuse services to individuals affected by major disasters and to emer- gency response providers re- sponding to major disasters. Congress will take up the pro-

cohol at their teen’s party. But 28 percent of teen partygoers have been at parties at a home where parents were present and teens were drinking alcohol.

• Only 12 percent of parents see drugs as their teen’s greatest concern. But twice as many teens (27 percent) say drugs are their greatest concern. The survey was released August

17. It was conducted by QEV Analyt- ics from March 9 to April 30, 2006. The firm interviewed at home by telephone a nationally representative random sample of 1,297 12- to 17- year olds (591 boys, 706 girls) and 562 parents (84 percent of whom were parents of teens surveyed). •

Underage drinking and drug use is going on mostly unknown by parents, even when parents are present in the house, according to the National Survey of American At- titudes on Substance Abuse XI:

Teens and Parents, an annual back- to-school survey conducted by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Colum- bia University.

“Teen drinking and drugging is a parent problem,” said Joseph A. Califano, Jr., CASA’s chairman and president and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.

“The denial, self-delusion and lack of awareness of these parental palookas put their children at enor-

mous risk of drinking and using ille- gal and prescription drugs.”

Survey highlights: • 80 percent of parents believe

that neither alcohol nor marijua- na is usually available at parties their teens attend. But 50 per- cent of teen partygoers attend parties where alcohol, drugs or both are available.

• 98 percent of parents say they are normally present during par- ties they allow their teens to have at home. But a third of teen partygoers report that par- ents are rarely or never present at the parties they attend.

• 99 percent of parents say they would not be willing to serve al-

New CASA survey finds most parents don’t know teens are drinking or using drugs

Plan for disaster

One important way for residential treatment programs to prepare for hur- ricanes and other disasters is to set up a mutual aid agreement and a transportation contract. Under a mutual aid agreement, one residential program would agree to take the patients of another, and vice versa. The agreements are set up by Disaster Planning Resources in Bowling Green, Oh., a company that facilitates disaster-planning contracts as reciprocal arrangements between treatment programs, and also which sets up trans- portation contracts.

For more information, log on to www.disasterplanningresources.com

Continued from previous page