SAMHSA Announces New Local Treatment Funding

By Crystal Swann

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services (SAMHSA) Administrator Dr. Nelba Chavez announced the availability of up to $30 million for grants to expand substance abuse treatment capacity in local communities with serious, emerging drug problems, or communities that proposed innovative solutions to unmet needs at the Conference’s Drug Crisis in Cities and Rural Communities Meeting.

The program, part of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment’s (CSAT) Targeted Treatment Capacity Expansion program, will provide treatment funding to cities, towns, counties and Indian tribes and tribal organizations.  Grant awards are expected to range from $100,000 to a maximum of $500,000.  Residential programs for pregnant and postpartum women and their infants and children could obtain average awards of $800,000.  Applications are sought from programs that identify clinical and service delivery approaches that are culturally responsive; address the clinical treatment needs of a specific population; propose approaches for outreach and retention of hard-to-reach populations; and utilize state-of-the-art treatment modalities.

The Conference was instrumental in the establishment of the Targeted Treatment Capacity Expansion Program which allows localities the flexibility to utilize treatment dollars to meet the emerging drug treatment needs of their communities.

Also, Dr. Chavez announced a new Internet-based facility locator service to assist individuals in locating treatment facilities in their communities.  The Substance Abuse Treatment Facility Locator service provides addresses, phone numbers, and road maps to the nearest treatment facilities, both public and private, in any state, city or community in the nation.  This new locator service provides information on drug abuse and alcoholism treatment programs licensed, certified, or otherwise approved by substance abuse agencies in each state.

The user-friendly locator service pinpoints the substance abuse treatment facilities closest to a starting point provided by the users.  It also allows the service users to tailor their searches according to the type of service they are seeking, including substance abuse treatment, detoxification, and methadone, and others.  The locator then displays a map showing the location of the five facilities closest to the specified starting point.

The facility locator service and funding information can be found at SAMHSA’s web-site at www.samhsa.gov

Dr. Chavez and SAMHSA also provided partial financial support for the January 26th meeting.