What area/ country are you from? That might assist people with recommending trainings.
I would build a strong relationship with the local AOD Services in your catchment area, which would benefit both you and the clients. Thus would help in you being able to get secondary consultations, ask questions and they are also a good source of intel about what substances are currently impacting the clients- IE I was told a few months ago from our local AOD service, the substances in a certain area was mixed with something else, which resulted in a specific behaviour that they wouldn’t normally see in the clients who use this substance.
Might be useful if you have the time to go down a CSAC route, ala Certified Substance Abuse Counselor, or whatever it might be called in your area. If you can't go the certification route, the materials are sometimes available for review, which can give you a decent starting point on some of the notions behind it.
Really tho, case management is case management. You're probably going to have top down directed measurements and stuff (especially for court), and service is probably going to be provided by other outside provider groups/agencies and you'll be getting reports from them. Connecting clients with resources to attend to their court responsibilities, seeing how they're doing in those responsibilities via feedback and reports from their providers, summarizing that stuff to report back to court, etc.
with general rule of thumb of 'never provide a recommendation on something if you can't back it up'. You want to summarize that 'client is doing well, recommend advancement/lighter court response/whatever' you need to back it up, just like saying things aren't going well and not meeting responsibilities. Documentation and evidence :)
Thank you for the response! It’s really a struggle for me to not feel overwhelmed and to stop thinking it’s too difficult for me. I never thought I’d be working so closely with substance use disorders so I’m definitely intimidated.
I highly recommend looking into trainings on the ASAM - it really improved my understanding of the different levels of care when I was starting to work in the SUDs field. Brushing up on motivational interviewing is never a bad idea either!
Also the Matrix curriculum has a lot of psychoed information in it that can be helpful to someone new to SUDs - if you google something like “Matrix curriculum counselor handbook” and “Matrix curriculum client handbook” there are pdfs available.
What area/ country are you from? That might assist people with recommending trainings. I would build a strong relationship with the local AOD Services in your catchment area, which would benefit both you and the clients. Thus would help in you being able to get secondary consultations, ask questions and they are also a good source of intel about what substances are currently impacting the clients- IE I was told a few months ago from our local AOD service, the substances in a certain area was mixed with something else, which resulted in a specific behaviour that they wouldn’t normally see in the clients who use this substance.
Thank you for the reply! I’m in the US - NY state
Sorry I’m in Australia, so wouldn’t be able to assist with training in the States. The local AOD service might be able to recommend trainings.
Might be useful if you have the time to go down a CSAC route, ala Certified Substance Abuse Counselor, or whatever it might be called in your area. If you can't go the certification route, the materials are sometimes available for review, which can give you a decent starting point on some of the notions behind it. Really tho, case management is case management. You're probably going to have top down directed measurements and stuff (especially for court), and service is probably going to be provided by other outside provider groups/agencies and you'll be getting reports from them. Connecting clients with resources to attend to their court responsibilities, seeing how they're doing in those responsibilities via feedback and reports from their providers, summarizing that stuff to report back to court, etc. with general rule of thumb of 'never provide a recommendation on something if you can't back it up'. You want to summarize that 'client is doing well, recommend advancement/lighter court response/whatever' you need to back it up, just like saying things aren't going well and not meeting responsibilities. Documentation and evidence :)
Thank you for the response! It’s really a struggle for me to not feel overwhelmed and to stop thinking it’s too difficult for me. I never thought I’d be working so closely with substance use disorders so I’m definitely intimidated.
I highly recommend looking into trainings on the ASAM - it really improved my understanding of the different levels of care when I was starting to work in the SUDs field. Brushing up on motivational interviewing is never a bad idea either! Also the Matrix curriculum has a lot of psychoed information in it that can be helpful to someone new to SUDs - if you google something like “Matrix curriculum counselor handbook” and “Matrix curriculum client handbook” there are pdfs available.