Total Dollars Awarded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (8-1-01 to 7-31-04): $ 425,000

Grantee: Janus Youth Programs, Inc., Portland, OR

Co-funders: The Collins Foundation, Northwest Health Foundation and Multnomah County Office of School and Community Partnerships

Primary Objective: To provide coordinated, innovative and accessible alcohol and drug treatment services to homeless youth in Portland, Oregon, through a collaboration of homeless youth providers in order to decrease the alcohol and drug use and abuse of street youth

Accomplishments:

• Strengthened and solidified the relationship between the primary alcohol and drug treatment and mental health providers and the agencies providing services to homeless youth.
• Increased the number of youth engaging in traditional alcohol and drug treatment services.
• Developed a highly popular and heavily attended series of programs, activities and events to engage youth in clean and sober activities.
• Utilized formerly homeless and addicted young people as agency employees (known as Recovery Transition Advocates) and incorporated them into the network of services offered through the homeless youth continuum.
• Developed a simple screening tool to assess alcohol and drug use/abuse in youth seeking services from the homeless youth continuum.
• Provided outreach through Recovery Transition Advocates to close to 80 youth daily (almost 30,000 duplicated contacts per year).

Future Plans:

• Work more closely with the recovery community to seek employees for youth positions.
• Continue discussions with local funders to provide funding beyond the completion of the project.
• Present project findings at the American Public Health Association and American Evaluators Association in November of 2003
• Continue the development of a commonly understood language between treatment providers.

Challenges:

• Developing a common language and understanding of traditional treatment outcomes between alcohol and drug providers and the homeless youth agencies.
• Once youth are engaged and ready for treatment, few options exist with the elimination of the Oregon Health Plan (State Insurance Program) for inpatient treatment.
• Securing future funding for the project.
• ncorporating Metamorphosis staff in agencies to provide direct service that are supervised by another agency.
• Developing program policies and procedures across multiple agencies with different missions, boards, directors and staff.

Graduates 2003