Project Outreach: An Experimental Support System Intervention Program

Abstract

A drug use intervention outreach project was developed which relied upon the active participation of health, welfare, employment, rehabilitation, social, educational, social-legal control, and national security agencies. A variety of explicit and implicit goals, techniques, and data collection techniques were mutually agreed upon by the agencies in order to confidentially register untreated drug users, alcoholics, and medicinal misusers; to integrate them into treatment; to train staffs of participating agencies; to assess the adaptive functioning of children living with drug-using alcoholic parents and/or siblings; to empirically document substance misuse in one area of Jerusalem, and to develop a model for outreach. Sixty-seven drug users were “discovered”; 12 were already in treatment. A number of the project's goals were achieved; others were not. The project is being continued for a second year.