Improving substance abuse treatment for indigent clients in Detroit

It has been clearly established that substance abuse treatment works (De Leon 1988). Thus, activities which increase the proportion of indigent clients in Detroit who actually get into treatment and activities which help indigent clients stay in treatment are likely to significantly improve treatment outcomes. The Target Cities projects in general and the Detroit Target Cities project in particular represent some of the few efforts currently underway to determine intervention activities which significantly improve treatment outcomes for indigent substance abusing clients. Subsequent evaluation has shown that the proportion of clients referred by the CDRS who were actually admitted into a treatment program increased significantly after full implementation of the Detroit Target Cities screening and pretreatment case management activities. Furthermore, the average time between referral by the CDRS and admission into a treatment program decreased significantly (Tucker 1997). Evaluation of the Detroit Target Cities jail-based substance abuse treatment program also showed a significant increase in the proportion of clients who remained drug free after full implementation of the program (Tucker 1998).