TCU assessments for treatment in community settings are included in this section. They were developed originally as part of the DATAR project, beginning in 1989, for use in outpatient and residential programs for assessing needs and progress of clients (see Simpson, 2004). Client-level assessments focus on needs and problem severity at intake, as well as continued psychosocial functioning and therapeutic engagement during treatment for evaluating and planning of care. By aggregating these client records within treatment units, they also serve program-level evaluations of needs and effectiveness.
Assessments for evaluating staff/organizational functioning are included as well, especially in relation to efforts by community programs to adopt treatment innovations (see Simpson, 2002; 2009; Simpson & Flynn, 2007).
The forms listed below evolved as a comprehensive treatment program assessment system, modified over years of research for use both in outpatient as well as residential settings. Earlier versions were developed and tested for specialized research projects (described later), but they were integrated over time. Core constructs of client needs and therapeutic process were retained, based on published evaluation findings, and the resulting network of measurement instruments were refined.
Because addiction and related mental and public health treatment applications can be highly specialized, these forms have been adapted further to meet several needs. In particular, the emergence of treatment for criminal justice populations during the past two decades required modest adaptations. They are presented in the section on CJ Treatment Forms. Even more recently, however, the family of TCU assessments have been reconstructed as TCU Core Forms.
Finally, assessment archives for several major research projects are available. Historically, they are the foundations of current TCU assessments and also have been used as resources over the years by program developers and other evaluation researchers. Data collection instruments and related research for each are described.