Location:

Minneapolis, Minnesota

 

Type of Organization:

Public Health Organization

  Twin Cities African American Recovery Maintenance Services
Agency Description: Recovery Resource Center (RRC), a division of RESOURCE, a multicultural and multiracial non-profit, community-based chemical health treatment program. RRC provides comprehensive primary and aftercare services to their clients including: individual case management and counseling, health education, employment services, parent education, and child care coordination and assistance.

Project Description: RRC, in partnership with My Home, Inc. (St. Paul) received funding from Minnesota’s Department of Health, Chemical Health division to implement the Twin Cities African American Recovery Maintenance and Support program (TC AARMS). TC AARMS works to provide culturally-specific recovery maintenance services for chemically dependent African American men and women. Under this grant, TC AARMS clients would experience higher rates of treatment completion and sobriety, improved life skills, decreased chemical use, and increased alternatives to violence and/or chemical use. AARMS clients at RRC can live in sober, supportive housing; My Home is currently working on acquiring housing services for their clients.

ACET Services: Starting in 2008, RRC contracted with ACET to evaluate of the AARMS Program. First, ACET collaborated with RRC staff to develop program-specific logic models, evaluation plans, and evaluation timelines. Second, ACET staff provided extensive feedback on a cross-program intake/exit tool which provided very valuable information on client perceptions of the recovery process and progress made at exit. Next, after discussions between RRC and ACET, RRC amended the logic model and incorporated some pre- and post-treatment data already collected by staff into the evaluation. Fourth, ACET collaborated with RRC staff to develop focus group scripts for clients and staff of each of the programs listed above. Last, ACET worked with RRC staff to develop a cross-program interview script to guide discussions with RRC’s community partners and key collaborators. Each spring, ACET facilitates focus groups with the clients and staff in the MARFU, TC AARMS and SHARE programs, analyzes and summarizes the focus group findings, and analyzes staff and client data and summarizes findings in a year-end technical report. After sharing the year-end reports, ACET also debriefs with RRC staff for their feedback and outcome interpretation.

Date of Service: 2008-Present