The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration awarded Clark County Superior Court’s Family Treatment Court a five-year grant totaling nearly $2 million.
The grant, which will be available in September, will support the voluntary program’s work, in conjunction with Clark County Community Services, to provide services to adults who have active state child dependency cases, as well as their children, according to a news release.
The therapy court helps parents abstain from drug and alcohol use, create safe, stable homes for children, reduce the length of time children are in out-of-home placements and increase family reunification.
There are 15 families enrolled in Family Treatment Court, though officials expect the program to grow to about 35 families by September 2018.
The $1.98 million grant will go toward creating four new services. Two of the services — Circle of Security and Celebrating Families — will focus on families affected by substance abuse and trauma. The two other services will focus on recovery support services, including coaching and mentoring by people who have lived in or have other experience in the child welfare system and reunification. They will also focus on home safety mentoring by trained foster parents.
“I’m very excited for the grant for many reasons. One is to bring more services that can help build upon parenting skills and offer more coaching and teaching moments for parents and their children at the same time,” said Shauna McCloskey, Therapeutic Specialty Courts coordinator.
McCloskey said the county is seeing a rise in dependency cases. Although she could only speculate as to the reason, McCloskey said there’s been a surge of methamphetamine use in the community.
“We are seeing more infants born testing positive for substances, so I think that’s a huge contributing factor,” she said. “We are very excited to offer more services to our families.”
Family Treatment Court started in 2006, and to date, 93 families have successfully completed the program.
