Specialized Treatment and Recovery Services (STARS): Effective Strategies to Engage Fathers in Treatment, Recovery, and Parenting

The STARS program, a component of Sacramento County's child welfare system, works with parents with substance use disorders. As fathers represent 30 percent of the STARS participants, this mini-plenary session highlights strategies for engaging men in services, regaining custody, and assuming parenting roles. The program evaluator, program developer, program manager, and a STARS graduate share these successful strategies and offer recommendations to frontline workers and program administrators for replication of this model in other jurisdictions. Three key strategies provide the basis for the STARS program: motivational interviewing, role modeling, and accountability. STARS workers help fathers understand that they need to recover "for their kids" and that recovery is separate from the child welfare case. This approach facilitates the father assuming responsibility for his recovery and his children. The session also identifies personal obstacles fathers often face to changing their lives and reassuming parental responsibilities, including late-stage addiction, resistance to the "system," lack of hope, and the feeling of dismissal by the Dependency Courts.
Nancy K. Young, Ph.D National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare Irvine, CA
Jeffrey L. Pogue Bridges Inc. Sacramento, CA
Sanford Robinson Jon Smymi Specialized Treatment and Recovery Services Sacramento, CA
View the complete list of keynote, plenary, and mini-plenary speakers.

Topics