Substance abuse treatment is available for adolescents and adults. Screening inventories and thorough assessments are the first steps in a comprehensive approach that includes education and treatment. SAT services are offered on site and in schools, which educate participants in the disease concept of chemical dependency and offer strategies to lessen substance abuse and maintain sobriety. The agency also offers substance abuse screenings for the courts and DUI treatment groups.

Programs include non-medical substance abuse treatment and educational services. Clients may be self referred or referred by professionals in the community, by schools or the courts. Screening inventories and thorough assessments serve as the first step in developing an individual service plan. This plan may result in referrals to individual counseling, small group work or medical facilities. These services, offered at the agency or in school settings, educate clients to the disease concept of chemical dependency and offer strategies to reduce substance abuse and maintain sobriety.  

Substance Abuse Treatment

How the program's outcomes will fit into the total community responses:

Catholic Charities provides a continuum of substance abuse services that include prevention, education, intervention, and treatment. Our substance abuse treatment services are offered on a sliding scale and supplement the services offered by the private sector. We also serve people who do not have access to third party payments, including Medicare/aid.

These services complement those offered in the community. Catholic Charities is involved in collaborative efforts to address the problem of chemical dependency in the community. The Northern Kentucky Region has experienced renewed focus in assessing the needs of our communities and developing planning initiatives to address those needs through improved collaboration and implementation of a continuum of care.

Staff of this service also work specifically in close collaboration with local high schools and other agencies to provide school-based substance abuse intervention services to students and families. As of this writing, Catholic Charities is the only program in the Northern Kentucky area that provides school-based substance abuse intervention counseling and support groups on high-school campuses.

Our services augment severely restricted chemical dependency treatment services, particularly for adolescents, in the Northern Kentucky community. Currently, Northern Kentucky does not have sufficient in-patient or residential treatment facilities for chemically dependent adolescents. Outpatient treatment opportunities also are severely restricted.

Our services are provided in the agency to families, couples, and individuals, and in public and private high schools, and in one residential program. This service complements the other services offered by school staff and mental health counselors in the area of substance abuse.  

Program's intent:

The SAT Program is intended to assist adults and adolescents to become aware of the risk factors which lead to chemical dependency and of their own risk status, to reduce or extinguish their high risk behaviors and to increase their levels of functioning.

Problems and conditions that this program addresses: Alcohol abuse is America's number one drug problem, and drug abuse is one of our nation's leading social problems. Americans have the highest rates of illicit drug use of any industrialized nation. Over 10,000 young people aged 16-24 are killed each year in substance abuse related deaths including drowning, suicides, violent injuries, homicides and fire. An average of 25,000 deaths and injuries a year occur at the hands of drivers impaired by substance abuse - 350 deaths and 5,900 injuries per year in Kentucky alone. The Alcohol Council of Greater Cincinnati reports that 10% of the population is alcoholic and that the same 10% consumes 85% of the alcohol sold. This problem has failed to receive the full attention of social service planners, government, and human service funding organizations and has generated a monumental social cost.