Prevention

• Community Engagement: We take a multifaceted and proactive approach to engaging the residents and visitors of our community to communicate risk and protective factors, and to inspire healthy behaviors. We meet people where the live, work and recreate in order to ensure equal access to our knowledge and resources.
• Community Partnerships: Allow us to share unique and precious resources and leverage our collective talents to enhance opportunities and likelihood for achieving positive health outcomes.  We actively encourage local school officials to increase and/or maintain participation of public schools in the Illinois Youth Survey, and to analyze data and consider opportunities for praxis.
• Cultural Equity:   By actively working to understand cultural differences and respond to them in a sensitive and relevant manner, we strive to make all persons feel respected, understood, and empowered to achieve mental wellbeing. We work to establish treatment relationships that help all persons expect fair and just treatment in relationship to all other cultures.
• Epidemiological Surveillance: We perform a contextualized situational assessment, or epidemiological examination of the occurrence of opioid misuse in a specific population, studying influential behavioral and social determinants, to guide and ensure efficacious prevention efforts.  
• Illinois Educational/Action Forums: We participate in state level educational discussions and policy-shaping testimony.  We work to take an active role in legislative processes – involvement in testimony and state panels promoting safe policy on opioid prescription and effective treatment.
• Local Educational/Action Forums:  We participate in community level educational discussions and community presentations.  We gather members of our community interested in tackling issues of addiction, offering a platform for open dialogue to establish/enhance coordination among the public and ourselves in identifying, communicating and promoting addiction risk and protective factors.
• Situational Assessment: We analyze informatics on opioid addiction and overdose for trends around age, gender, education level and socio-economic status to help shape and inform our targeted prevention efforts.  All aspects of mental, physical, spiritual, and social wellbeing are considered in our strategy development. 
• Universal and Primary Prevention: We actively utilize the KCHD website, newsletter, and social media, as well as local radio and television, to raise awareness of the risk factors associated with opioid usage and the protective factors to avoid overdose and abuse. This education also seeks to prevent addiction before it happens. We have assisted in conducting a community drug take back events and promote local locations for safe medication disposal.
• Targeted and Secondary Prevention: Psycho-education regarding safe medication storage in the home is provided during the initial assessment process. We deliver an eight-week course in our local schools aimed at reducing the non-medical use of prescription drugs among 8th-12th grader and adults.
• Indicated and Tertiary Prevention: Family systems work is actively utilized to support the family system’s movement towards wellness and support of recovery.  Our governance supports indicated and tertiary prevention.

Treatment

• Accredited Treatment:  We are committed to providing assurance to persons served that we conform to internationally accepted standards for best practices in behavioral health care. This results in accountability to our funding sources, referral agencies and community.
• Adult Treatment: During the treatment process, we promote development of emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and repair of moral injury. We work to develop the ability to cope with impulsive thinking and behavior to avoid relapse, as well as active relapse planning.
• Youth Treatment: Intervention strategies are used to address early indicators of addictive behavior and thinking as a way to prevent further abuse or dependency problems. Protective factors, designed to reduce risk of continued addictive behavior, are promoted in the treatment process and include academic responsibility, healthy social refrain from delinquent behavior, and domestic responsibility.
• Care Coordination: We are committed to effectively treating substance abuse, and immediately helping those who require an inpatient or detoxification level of care access those services. In response to the continued devastation caused by heroin, opioid, and prescription medication abuse we will actively strive to ensure that there are no gaps in service for those who are seeking help.
• Culturally Relevant Treatment: We value diversity in that we treat persons with consideration to their age/agedness, ethnicity/race, gender/orientation, language/literacy, mental health, physical ability, socioeconomic status, and spiritual beliefs. 
• Early Intervention:  To promote early intervention and access to treatment, we are actively credentialing ourselves with diverse insurance panels. This includes commercial insurances panels and Medicaid Managed Care programs.
• Family Systems: We believe that an individual’s wellbeing is not inseparable from their family network relationship. During the treatment process, we actively work to promote family connectivity and wellbeing as a way to help mitigate mental health and substance abuse problems.
• Integrated Treatment: We are an accredited integrated mental health and substance abuse treatment provider. All persons served are treated for both mental health and substance abuse treatment simultaneously so that persons with multiple diagnostic features experience a seamless and effective treatment process.
• Person Centered Treatment: Providing an atmosphere of empathy and respect we work closely with the person served to discover unhealthy behaviors that lead to poor health outcomes; listening to them communicate and express their individualized desires for health and wellbeing, supporting the person in working towards and achieving meaningful growth and development.   
• Psychiatric Treatment: We offer psychiatric treatment to those individuals who are actively engaged in the treatment process. Psychiatric treatment is provided in a purposeful and careful manner that is very mindful of addiction history.

Recovery

• Adverse Life Experiences-Informed: We work to promote long lasting recovery by helping those served in treatment to reduce and avoid adverse life experiences. Additionally, those adverse life experiences and trauma exposures experience in life are addressed in treatment to ensure healthy perspective, transformation in thinking, and effective coping strategies.
• Trauma-Informed Approach:  We purposefully work to help persons served recognize signs and symptoms of trauma including substance abuse and poor mental health.  We work to assist the person to develop a balanced perspective on trauma experience and address those trauma reactions which could negatively affect recovery.
• Consumer Insight Instrument: We utilize an annual consumer insight instrument to obtain valuable consumer insight on our treatment effectiveness and life changes that will support the recovery process after treatment completion.  We purposefully incorporate insight and education as a part of recovery.
• Criminal Justice-Involved:  We work very closely with law enforcement as both a recipient of referrals and a participant in promoting community wellbeing. We provide off-site services at Plano Police Department and will soon also provide treatment at Oswego Police Department.
• Drug Court: We are a member of the Kendall County Drug Court team and outpatient treatment provider for those individuals in the program.  Additionally, we actively work to coordinate ancillary health and wellness supports for those receiving treatment services.
• Post-Treatment Surveillance:  Three months post discharge we reach out to our substance abuse clients to perform a Post Treatment Survey to express interest in our clients’ continued wellbeing and to explore and address any relapse potential.  We are further working to develop an alumni association of former clients who made completed treatment and maintained their recovery to speak to those clients in active treatment.
• Protective Factors: To promote long lasting recovery, we purposely work to promote development of protective factors to help persons served effectively deal with life stressors and to reduce risk of relapse. This includes helping the individual to access increased education, meaningful employment, healthy social connectedness, and pro-social community engagement.
• Risk Factors:  We work to support recovery by proactively working to help persons served identify and address risk factors that could lead to relapse or poor mental health outcomes for themselves or their families. This includes providing parent education, addressing unhealthy relationships, changing of unhealthy coping strategies, and efforts to promote resilience.
• Stages of Change: To support movement from pre-contemplation to contemplation, preparation to action, and maintenance; we have family education nights as part of the treatment process to support healthy systems for continued wellbeing.  We also incorporate both Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotic Anonymous speakers into our treatment groups as a way to promote early engagement in healthy support networks.
• Veteran Support: We are a member of the Kendall County Veterans Court and work very closely with the Kendall County Veterans Assistance Commission. These commitments results in a seamless progression from treatment to sustained health behaviors.