Summary Report Treatment And Rehabilitation For Women With Substance Use Problems Workshop On Best Practices June 6 And 7, 2002

6.0 Looking Ahead: Applying Best Practices

The final exercise was designed to encourage participants to think about concrete ways for applying best practices in their community or jurisdiction and the support that would enable this process.

Sharing the Results of the Workshop
The workshop report will be circulated within participating agencies and governments

Review of Current Programming
Conduct a review of agency services in relation to best practices. This would include mapping and assessing services, and examining the philosophy of the agency and staff. Staff would need to be involved in the review and participate in building services to reflect best practices.

Improvements to Services
Participants identified a number of improvements they would like to make according to best practices:

• Individualized length of stay. Work to increase the accessibility of this approach. Funding would be required to assist with transportation. Satellite sites and webcam capability would be required to make services accessible to women in many areas.
• Young women. Develop new strategies for working with young women based on best practices. Equip staff with the knowledge to carry this forward.
• Long-term recovery. Increase in the number of long-term recovery homes.
• Review written materials. Ensure that materials are accessible and appropriate to women’s literacy levels.
• Remote areas. Advocate for treatment and rehabilitation centres in places where they do not exist, such as Iqaluit.

Child Protection Protocol Development
Possible development of protocols on local and provincial levels to improve child protection and lessen the barriers and gaps related to child protection.

Best Practices Standards and Outcome Measures
Establish standards and outcome measures specific to women, which could also be used for future funding guidelines, program evaluation and promotional activities. Work with funders to encourage the adoption of best practices’ standards.

Local Networking
Use the publication Best Practices – Treatment and Rehabilitation for Women with Substance Use Problems as a guideline to review existing inter-agency work and ensure that all agencies are aware of the best practices. Where local networking does not exist, try to establish strong relationships with other community resources and work with them to continue to address barriers in programming.

Regional/Provincial Networking
Establish or revitalize existing networks for the purpose of collaboration and information-sharing. This could also involve obtaining funding for outreach work (for example, a newsletter, information pamphlets, media outreach work).

National Network
Participants indicated a desire to establish a national network of service providers. This would allow for broad exchange of information via a number of mechanisms, list serve, bimonthly teleconferences, conferences, web casting and chats. It would also increase effectiveness of advocacy efforts aimed at improving services for women and promoting best practices. There is a Listserv (WSUP Listserv) already in place on the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (CCSA) Website. The instructions for joining the network are available on CCSA Website at www.ccsa.ca/womgene.htm. The purpose of this list is for exchanging information and offering support around women's treatment issues.

Waiting list
There is a need to develop new solutions to reduce waiting lists for treatment.