Super Sessions

Addiction, Treatment and Recovery: Implications for Child Welfare Policy and Practice will focus on the neuroscience of addiction, including the chronic effects of addiction on the brain, the recovery process and advances in substance use disorder treatment. Attendees will gain insight into how the treatment and recovery process impacts child welfare outcomes and will learn how child welfare can be a good consumer of substance use disorder treatment services.

Developing a Plan of Safe Care for Infants with Prenatal Substance Exposure and their Mothers: Collaborative Approaches Learned in a Six State Initiative will feature the lessons learned from the National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare’s Substance Exposed Infant Initiative, a two-year SAMHSA-funded project with six states. Child welfare, substance use disorder treatment, medical care providers, and researchers have made significant collaborative efforts at the state and local level to address the needs of infants who have been prenatally exposed to substances.

Family Drug Courts: Children’s Interventions to Improve Outcomes will present data and outcome findings from local and cross-site evaluations to demonstrate how incorporating children’s interventions within Family Drug Courts (FDC) leads to improved child welfare, substance use treatment, and family outcomes. Built from a common vision and extraordinary cross-system collaborative effort, the FDC movement has emerged as one of the promising models for improving outcomes for children and families affected by substance use disorders in the child welfare system.

Effective Practice and Clinical Strategies Across the Continuum of Child Welfare Services for Addressing the Needs of Children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders and Other Conditions Related to Prenatal Substance Exposure. Emerging research has highlighted the large population of children in child welfare who have Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders and other conditions related to prenatal substance exposure who go undiagnosed or are misdiagnosed and are not having their needs met. This super session will help providers understand what works and increase the effectiveness of services to meet the specialized needs of these children.