Background and Overview

The TCU Treatment System includes a set of assessments and manual-guided interventions that “target” specific needs and status of clients in different stages of change during treatment. Evidence for these stages provide foundations for the TCU Treatment Process Model (Simpson, 2004; 2006) and involves induction into treatment, engagement in treatment, early recovery in treatment, adequate retention before treatment release, and preparation for community re-entry. The needs and functioning of an organization (i.e., treatment agency) affects the delivery of treatment services and may also need attention. An integrated set of TCU Assessment Forms are available to link client and program measures into this process. All of these TCU resources are “copyrighted” in an effort to limit commercial or for-profit applications, but there is no charge to service providers for downloading and using them.
(See Permissions and Obtaining Forms)

TCU Treatment Interventions are described below, organized according to their typical and strategic applications to the sequence of client needs and progression during treatment. They can be used in various “mix-n-match” combinations or as supplements to other treatment resources. Although they are categorized here in relation to conceptual treatment stages, there is a variety of sequential applications possible within and across the different stages of care. Because the host organization plays a critical role in this process, manuals are also available to help initiate and guide selected organizational interventions.

Historically, these interventions were developed in response to service gaps or unmet counseling and organizational needs of substance abuse treatment programs. Most were participating in a series of NIDA-funded grants to TCU (especially DATAR, CETOP, Women/Children, and CJ-DATS projects). Treatment settings have included community-based outpatient methadone and drug-free services, prison-based treatment, and intensive residential care. Their clients have included men and women, sometimes with children, reporting a wide variety of drug use histories and legal involvement (such as in-prison treatments and diversion programs for parolees or probationers). With modest adaptations in language and illustrations, the interventions have been shown to be applicable across highly diverse settings. Manuals have been designed to be highly focused, practical, and flexible in order to meet the therapeutic needs of “real-world” programs. Counselor training events for these materials (generally based on a train-the-trainers model) emphasize intervention objectives, role-playing exercises and practice, and maintaining adherence to core elements of each intervention.

All TCU Interventions rely on a cognitive-based visual representation strategy for counseling—that is, TCU Mapping-Enhanced Counseling (Dansereau, Joe, & Simpson, 1993; Dansereau, Dees, & Simpson, 1994)—shown to enhance client communication, planning, and decision-making skills. As a clinical technique, node-link mapping incorporates visual tools (e.g., guide maps, free-form maps, information maps) that clients and counselors use to more readily identify and address the variety of concepts covered during treatment. Guides for counselor applications of mapping are listed below, which typically serve as reference materials for counselor training events. Following the TIC interventions and mapping guides, there are four groups of interventions listed—treatment induction, engagement, early recovery, and retention/re-entry.

Finally, the last section includes organizational interventions developed as guides to help improve organizational functioning, especially in relation to program readiness for innovation training and adoption (see DATAR and Drugs in the Workplace projects).