family center treatment is the way to be. i don't understand why everyone's not doing it across the board because it is shown to be more effective. i just think it should be more programs like heros and sheros in order for many more families to be touched. so kim, we were talking about the adolescent and other institutions that can actually come in and act as a beginning of a buffer for that adolescent. talk to us a little bit about that. sure. well, i think in just about every setting, a child exists in there are caring adults available, or there can be caring adults available who can be a protective factor to a child and help that child access their own inner resilience. so including things like helping children realize that they can use humor, that they can develop close relationships with safe adults. teaching children ways that they can be safe.

okay, if you can't bring friends home because crazy things are happening there and you can't study there how can we put something in place so that you have a safe place to go after school? if you're concerned about your siblings then how can we make sure that their needs get met? so really, i think we just need to encourage adults to not ignore signs that a child is struggling and reach out to children and to kids to say if you have one caring adult in your life who is in your corner that can make all the difference for you. absolutely. i absolutely think so and you know the issue is that today the school systems are really so overburdened by so many budget considerations and cuts, you know, to social workers and cuts to this and that. and yet, you know, as you mentioned, just that one person because oftentimes-and correct me if i'm wrong, you're the experts-the child may think that it's their fault what's happening in the home. absolutely. i think the messages that we give children about what's happening, i think children can handle straight talk

about their problems at home if we deliver it to them in ways that are age appropriate. so we often talk in the context of children who have an addicted parent or children who have a parent with mental illness problems. we talk about the three cs, making sure the children understand that the three cs are you did notcause this, you cannotcontrol it, and you cannotcure it. so that they understand that they neither have the power nor the responsibility to fix this problem, but they can communicate about what's happening. they can take care of themselves. they can be healthy and successful despite the difficulties that are happening at home. erica, i want to go to the point that you made, at the point where your children are taken from you. how did that reintegration occur and what did you do as a parent to really begin to heal your family? i think what was most important for me was to realize that

i needed to help-i needed help to forgive myself before i could really begin to heal in order to help heal my children. i had to acknowledge that i had to take care of myself before i could take care of them and that was what i feel was most important. and then when i really got the opportunity to talk about it with them to explain to my children that it wasn't their fault and that i was sick and that, you know, there was things that i had to learn how to cope with, and that no matter what i loved them and that they are my world. and they are what's important, but in no way was it their fault. and it wasn't until i had that conversation with them that we really began to heal and become a family again and move on with our lives. and then, they could begin to trust again? definitely. you know, they've learned that they have confidence, that there wasn't anything they could have done differently. and that it's okay for them to have the feelings that they're feeling and i've opened up an environment for them where

it's okay for them to tell me how they feel and talk about what they experienced during my time of addiction and that-validate their feelings. and that it's okay. and they have learned how to trust and move on and are doing fantastic in school and have just really become amazing children, despite the trauma that they experienced at a young age. and this is a key word, fran, trauma. that is really the main issue here. the notion that the kids are traumatized and the trauma really does take a long time for folks to heal. correct? correct. and trauma has a lot of-there's an extended definition of trauma. we used to think of trauma very narrowly and now we're seeing that both in several different cultures and, in this situation of families with young people living with

addictions and mental illness, the trauma can be very subtle and doesn't show up until they are adults. the trauma can be very severe and needs to be intervened with right away. so there are all different levels of trauma, but the good news is we also know so much more and we are-all of these services that are being described today, the key factor for all of them for me in prevention is collaboration. we must continue to collaborate and to bring these services together to bear and that it takes more than just one intervention, one person in treatment, one school that's attentive to be able for the entire community to wrap themselves around it. talk a little bit about the protective factors that folks need to be aware of in terms of providing that preventive approach to families. ok. well, first the protective factors, as kim was saying, it's in the family itself and you have to find where that is.

and family therapy, as was described, as well as having a faith-based organization come in and having the contact, depending upon who you are, where you live, what your culture is. we'll identify what are the strengths. what are the protective factors which are the strengths and the resilience? then you continue to build that out because every member of the family has a strength. it doesn't always kind of coordinate well sometimes when the family is disruptive. that's when you bring in the other sources. so there is several, you know, parenting skills, young people skills of knowing when to say "i need help." knowing when to say i can't do this anymore and go to that protective adult, a trusting adult. there is the schools are a protective factor, the community is a huge, faith based, there is many of them. endless. endless sources. kim, i want to go back. we had a conversation off camera about military families.

as we look at the returning members of the military, the veterans that are coming back, what special challenges should service delivery systems be on the lookout for? well, i'd say first of all when military service people come back they've had -especially if they have been in combat-they've had experiences that may be extremely horrific and they are very invested in protecting their family from the impact of that. which often leads them to a kind of secrecy or isolation around that. both because they think no one can understand their experience and because theyey want to prott their loved ones from it. it's hard enough to reintegrate into your family after being through that, but then to feel like you have to-you can't talk about it with family or with other people makes that reintegration even more difficult. while the soldier has been or the service person has been away, the family has also adapted to their not being present. the other parent, if they have children, has learned to do

a lot of things on their own. maybe he or she has taken financial responsibility on all by themselves and now the service person returns and they have to kind of share that role. there are a lot of shifts and changes in roles. the service person may be dealing with psychological wounds or physical wounds or brain wounds that make services, professional services, necessary for them and the service providers have to understand the unique military culture that they need in order to heal. very good. nancy, let me shift a little bit about and let's start talking about the family drug court. talk to us a little bit about that and what that does to really facilitate a positive process within dysfunctional families. yeah, you asked earlier about some of the things that the national center is doing and we're happy that there is this kind of approach, that is relatively new,

just starting in 1996, but it really takes the child protective service system and the family court and the substance abuse treatment providers and addresses the whole family. so, just as fran was saying, the importance of collaboration. what does that actually mean when you're working with a particular family and importantly what does that mean for all of the families. so it uses some key concepts about making sure that we can identify families with substance abuse and mental health problems as they're entering the child protective service system quicker, getting them access to services quicker. making sure that each of the family members has a support system, has a treatment plan when needed. uses the court, the family court to more carefully monitor what is going on in the treatment plan, particularly around the parent and their substance use disorder and the child and how the child's permanency and the relationships

that they must develop are being provided for them. so that the child and the parent is seen as the unit of intervention, which is so important. very good. when we come back, i want to continue on and identify other sources that families can go to in order to get help. we'll be right back. [music playing] for more information on national recovery month to find out how to get involved or to locate an event near you, visit the recovery month web site at recoverymonth.gov. [music playing] where's mom? did she forget me? i wonder what happened to her. what if i get left here? drugs and alcohol may make you forget your problems for a moment, but that's not all you forget. my mother worked hard to be in recovery and i love her for that.

for drug and alcohol treatment for you or someone you love, call 1-800-662-help. brought to you by the u.s. department of health and human services. [music playing] bridging resources in communities, bric, is the acronym. we, as the name implies, we bridge resources in communities with a prevention focus. our primary role is to partner with great organizations like the far southeast family strengthening collaborative. the mission of the far southeast family strengthening collaborative is to be a catalyst for the ward 8 community, really helping the community coalesce around issues of families and children and the issues that they deal with. i think that anytime there is an issue within the family, the entire family is impacted. whether it is mental health, substance abuse,

hiv, whatever it is. if one family member is impacted, then it impacts the entire family. family really is anybody that you can rely on. any resource that you have at your disposal to build your own strengths. you do have to look at the whole picture because if you're constantly just focusing on the children or the youth and not their parents or other caregivers, then when they go home there's going to be a disconnect. and if you have a youth that is using a substance, that can be dramatic on the parents and on the whole entire family as well because that individual can impact the family. the family is a part of the treatment process. the person that's getting the treatment themselves is just one individual, but the family has actually been impacted, you know, by the substance abuse or mental health abuse or whichever one it is. i think it's important to have the family together as a whole so the treatment plan can work well for the family and the individual that's getting the treatment. within this community right now there's a poverty rate of

close to 50 percent. the unemployment rate is the highest in the country at 35 percent. we have a huge rate of hiv and aids. pcp is huge in this community. violence is huge in this community. so really, it starts with the family unit and we believe that youth and families are key to the success of this community. one thing that bric has been very successful in doing is fostering really good relationships with our federal and local partners. the goal is to establish, with as many partners in the community as possible, because that builds the coalition, builds the reputation, and builds the relationships. one of those programs is what we call community-diverted cases. a lot of times, there are issues in families with cfsa has to be involved. but it's not raised to the level where youth has to automatically be removed or something like that. so one of our jobs here is to work with that family to try to keep them together and provide the services that help them and support them in staying together.

we do job placement. we do education stuff. we do all the things that a family might need in order to become self-sufficient. there are some very talented, very passionate people, very educated, very intelligent people, but they're just living in an environment with lack of resources. i have five girls and three boys and they help me get-they helped me get them into afterschool programs and also after care and summer programs for them in the summer so they won't have to be around the neighborhood so much. ward 8 is a really strong community and it has a lot of strengths within this community and a lot of times the people within this community aren't given credit for that. and so our job is to really try to build those families up. remove any barrier to them being successful because a lot of times there are enough barriers in people's lives. so just the distance can be a barrier. travel can be a barrier. unfamiliar areas can be a barrier. eliminating those at all costs because eventually we don't want to have to be here.

we want to be able to just utilize the resources that were in this community for them to rely on. the strength of our partners, the strength of the relationships in our community to me is the crux of what we do. it is why we're able to do what we do. i love the fact that i can meet a person and the person can be unemployed. he can be homeless. he can have mental health issues. he can be on substance abuse and i can still see him and say, "you can still be what you want to be in spite of that." the collaborative have helped me and my family. they're still continuously helping me and my family. and the resources here, if a lot of other people knew about it, they would feel the same way i do. at far southeast family strengthening collaborative, we're here as a family and we treat you as a family when you come in. if your heart is there, you're willing to help the families, i think we can make a great impact in the ward 8 community.

erica, talk a little bit about what you do and how families can access your services. so what i do is i am a family support specialist and what my program does is we provide peer engagement workers. we're all in recovery ourselves and we go out to the family and we talk with the mother and we really-we get on her level and we assess her needs and what the family needs and what we can do to help them continue in their recovery and we really work on making sure that they have access to all of the resources in the community. and on top of that, we do our best to coordinate care with all their other services like you were talking about with collaborating. you know, i think it's really important for our families, most of them have involvement with the department of children and families, and you know, so we stay in close contact with the department, with their worker and with their therapist and with their treatment providers and we make sure that everybody stays on the same page.

and in doing that, our families have been very successful. we have 91 percent of our families stay in our program and stay engaged and they have done a wonderful job. and on top of that, we provide parenting classes and which is the biggest piece because being a mother in recovery myself, it's so hard to balance your recovery and staying sober and then you want to be the best parent you can possibly be because you're trying to make up for lost time and all of these other things. so to-the fact that our program offers parenting classes, i think it amazing and it really teaches the person in recovery how to parent their child and when to ask for help and what to do with your children while you're in recovery. and kim, talking about when to ask for help, a lot of families do not ask for help because they feel they would be stigmatized. right. and it would either affect their job status or their community status or their neighborhood status.

talk to us a little bit about that. well, i think that stigma is a huge problem that keeps people from seeking services and so one of the things that i love so much about-what erica and i were talking about in the green room is how she as a person in recovery can reach out to other mothers to really bust through this stigma and say treatment works and i'm living proof of it and i am your peer. so reducing the sense of hierarchy. and just, i think that we constantly need to be aware that people are bigger than their problems. we need to see the humanity in the families that come before us and say, "i know that you have difficulties, but you also have resources and strengths, so come and get the help that you need." and fran, exactly that, from a prevention standpoint when people start seeing some of the warning signs, where can they seek help? they can seek help by going to our web site. i think it's the fastest way for them to find out throughout the country. because we're a federal web site, we're nationally known,

we have the ability to go into every state, every territory, every jurisdiction, and point you to directions like the programs that we're talking about today instead of listing them out. i think it's important for us in prevention to help our families and our individual, our young people to know that those resources are out there for them and its easy access. this is the day and the time for everything to be on the web. it's very easy now. it's much more difficult to motivate yourself to make that-push that button on the computer then it is to actually access help. and what they will be accessing is help with coalitions that can help them? for prevention, it's all of the above. but i would highly recommend looking at the whole continuum of services. because what we're talking about here is a family with multiple parts and there are people that would need

some coalition attention, being able to feel useful again by being a member of a community organization. young people wanting to become part of a group in their school. whether it is a group because their family got separated, which is very common in our business or whether it's just a group to be a leader and to bring out some of those skills. and then, of course, our array of treatment services on multiple levels and then, of course, at last, all of the resources and the services are coming alive and supported around recovery support. i think recovery support is going to help us quicker than everything we've done so far in helping to reduce this discrimination against people with substance abuse and mental health disorders. getting back to the court system. i think that the more the courts get engaged, really, they have helped tremendously in the whole issue of stigma.

they've almost got it to a point where people begin to see that it's not a moral issue. it's not a really criminal issue, but it's an issue of a disease that-diseases both mental and substance use-that have to be managed. i think we have a lot of hope that before families get to the court system-either the family court or the criminal court-that they're reaching out to others. the power of mutual help and peers helping peers, both within adolescence and younger children but parents helping other parents. you know, the formal system is extremely important to be there with treatment and with recovery supports, but the power of what erica is doing with reaching out and really offering that "i've been there, i understand. you can do it. i did it." and someone said to me that what they really got when they were engaged with the parent partner was hope.

that their life could change. that their family could change. that they could parent their children and that there was a way out. because in the depths of the addiction or the mental illness, you really don't see what's the path, "how do i get out of this?" "what is there besides jail or besides institutions?" so the power of mutual aid, i don't think can be understood-or understated rather. can i add something to that? we've been talking a lot about prevention and some of about treatment, but i always like to say one of my mantras is after care should not be an afterthought. we're talking about the continuum of family recovery, and so for those families that have engaged in treatment, the time period after treatment is absolutely critical to them and services to help families navigate the changes in family relationships need to start before they end their services. so that when inevitably the honeymoon ends and the parent

begins to think oh no, this was supposed to be easier, now it's harder, so that the parent doesn't withdraw and become isolated again, and again their risk of relapse goes way up at that point. and if it's an adolescent that's been in treatment, same thing-it takes a long time for families to make changes at the relationship level, so after care needs to be thought of in advance. aftercare should not be an afterthought. very good point. and i think it's also very important to stress during the aftercare that the importance of a support system. recovery changes from the 1st year to the 2nd year to the 5th year to the 10th year. it's an ongoing process and through that process, no matter where you're at, if you're at the beginning or if you are 20 years into it you need people behind you that are there to support you at all steps. so that, you know, when you're having those difficult moments that you can say, you know, today was a rough day, you know, and i need your support.

it's just crucial to continue supporting that family in recovery and all aspects of it. and erica, let me ask you a question. if i know of a family member-i am not in the immediate family but if i know of a family member that has a problem, how should i approach getting or seeking help for that individual? i think that the best way to go about it is to really educate yourself first and to gather information about the resources in your community to help that family member. but then to approach that family member face to face on a, you know, mutual level and tell them that you think they might be having a problem and to not go at them with judgment or to look down on them but to just really say, "you know, i think that you're having a hard time right now and i've come up with these resources to help you and why don't we do this together." very good. nancy, final thoughts? i think part of what erica said with reaching out to that

family member is so important for each of us to seek the formal system when needed but to act with compassion. it could be any one of us and to act with compassion when it's not your immediate family but someone in your neighborhood that that's really what that individual needs at that point is a conversation and how you feel and how that can be beneficial for that person to see their behavior in connection with their larger family and community. fran? final thoughts? i'll build off of what nancy said. i think for me, it's the knowing where to look for help and i think you can-the formal system for me is the states. everyone lives-states, the head of a territory or a tribal elder and we have to remember that the states and the communities must work together in collaboration. and that but at the same time, we have to keep focused on the level of care each individual needs in a family. not everyone needs the same services, but if

we work together both outside the home and inside the home and the last thought is we've done a lot of talking about addiction. addiction has been learning very quickly from the consumers of mental health and i think people who have been living or are living with mental health disorders they call themselves consumers and this movement is teaching us a lot about bringing these resources together. kim? recovery is a process, it is not an event. it unfolds over time and it changes over time, and so the services and the supports that are needed will change over time and, furthermore, it is a family process, so it needs to be addressed as a family process. we cannot treat only the individual-we have to look at the relationships. well, i want to remind everyone that national recovery month happens every september. i hope that you visit our web site and are able to access all of the materials, so that in september you are able to create a small, medium, or large event in your community.

thank you for being with us, it was a great show. for a copy of this program or other programs in the road to recovery series, call samhsa at 1-800-662-help. or order online at recoverymonth.gov and click multimedia. [music playing] every september, national recovery month provides an opportunity for communities like yours to raise awareness of substance use and mental health problems. to highlight the effectiveness of treatment and that people can and do recover. in order to help you plan events and activities in commemoration of this year's recovery month observance, the free online recovery month kit offers ideas, materials, and tools for planning, organizing, and realizing an event or

outreach campaign that matches your goals and resources. to obtain an electronic copy of this year's recovery month kit and gain access to other free publications and materials related to recovery issues, visit the recovery month web site at www.recoverymonth.gov or call 1-800-662-help. [music playing]