Northwest ATTC webinar – Digital Health Services to Address Addiction in Families: Allies in Recovery

Dominique Simon September 9, 2021

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“What I’m going to show you today,” says Allies in Recovery founder and CEO Dominique Simon-Levine, “is the best of what science suggests is the behavior and the interactions that can succeed in reducing stress and conflict between a family member and a loved one with addiction, and in engaging that loved one to seek help and recovery.”

In this one-hour webinar, Dr. Simon-Levine outlines both the essentials of the CRAFT approach to working with families, and Allies in Recovery’s unique combination of resources, teaching and support activities for anyone with a loved one struggling with substance use.

This recent presentation to the Northwest Region of the ATTC SAMHSA, provides all the talking points you might need to show that families of substance users are not just unsung heroes, but a huge (~ 40% of adults) untapped resource for reducing harm and helping a loved engage with treatment and sustain recovery. A family member who follows the CRAFT program of shepherding a loved one into recovery reduces health care costs for themselves by an average 25% over 5 years. This evidence-based approach to training the family gets over 60+% of loved ones into treatment, despite widespread resistance to seeking help or recovery.

As an Allies in Recovery (AiR) member, you know that AiR has created an online approach to CRAFT, a leading family-directed behavioral skills training method. AiR has integrated “skill acquiring” into a more programmatic approach to the family dynamics that attend substance use. With extensive access to online interactions with experts, discussion forums, and personal support content, AiR establishes a unique continuity that enhances family emotional and physical health and significantly alters substance use patterns, rates of relapse, and engagement of treatment.

Dominique Simon

Dominique launched Allies in Recovery in 2003. Her work has been featured on HBO and NPR. She is a facilitator and a trained speaker on issues of addiction and the family. She has worked extensively developing and evaluating federally-funded substance abuse programs for organizations and clinics throughout Massachusetts and New York. With an interest in recovery and substance abuse that spans 20 years, she sees a huge need to help families develop the skills to help a loved one recover fully in a supportive, whole, and lasting way in their families and in their communities. Her mission is to have Allies in Recovery fill that gap.

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