6 Tips to Make Your Inpatient Treatment Center “Friendly” to Justice Related Professionals

By: David Louis, MA CAADC CCS

Judges, District Attorneys, Lawyers, Probation officers and Police officers have a tough job, especially when it comes to working with those affected by substance use disorder. I should know. My addiction took me to straight to the back of a police car, a jail cell and in front of a judge! But this was the BEST thing that happened to me, because it gave my family and myself a great motivator to enter and stay in treatment. And believe me, at 19 years old, I did not WANT to be there, but the legal motivator of possibly doing jail time kept me there long enough to get the help I needed.

After 18 years of sobriety and 15 years working in the field of inpatient treatment, I have worked closely with many justice related professionals (JRPs for short). As an addiction counselor for 8 years, I worked with many men who were on probation, parole or had upcoming court cases, especially since I worked in a program that was long-term residential (12 months). And over these years, I learned some valuable lessons about how to interact professionally and effectively with justice related professionals. If you want to attract referrals from Justice Related Professionals into your program, here are some areas you need to consider.

Provide Consistent Communication

In my experience, this is one of the most important issues for JRPs: they must be communicated with about the status of their clients. If you do not have a system in place to quickly, effectively and efficiently communicate with the JRP who is connected to the client, you shouldn’t start working with them. A majority of these professionals have taken an oath to protect the public, and part of the way they do this is to know where their clients reside at all times.

Early on as a counselor, I learned this the hard way. I had a client who was on parole on my caseload. He decided to leave the treatment center against medical advice. And instead of informing his parole officer immediately that he left, I completely forgot and didn't notify the officer! Several days later his parole officer called and was not happy. He informed me that it is his job to make sure that his parolees are not wandering the streets somewhere, unaccounted for, and that I had blown it. Suffice to say, it took me a year to repair that relationship with the parole officer and earn back his trust.

The question then naturally arises, “What about HIPAA and client confidentiality?” This issue comes up time and time again when it comes to communicating about a client to a JRP. I am not an expert or authority in issues of confidentiality, so I will not give any advice or go over the debates that swirl around this topic. All I will say is this: have the client fill out the release of information form. If the client fills out this form properly, then there will be no issue. If you do not get the form signed, then you have tied your own hands behind your back (pun intended) and you will not have a good working relationship with your JRP or the ethics board of your governing body!

Provide Easy Access to Clients

I remember one time, years ago, when a probation officer stopped by our facility to check on one of his clients. He entered the door and was immediately confronted by one of my novice and overeager staff members, who, upon seeing his badge, said to him, “Sir, you cannot come into this building. This is a confidential area!” Long story short, this probation officer was not pleased by how he was treated in that encounter and I had to clean up the mess.

This is an issue that needs to be thought through very carefully. My eager staff member was right, in that you must set up your treatment center in such a way that visitors are going through a check in process, because the clients in your facility deserve and must be given anonymity and confidentiality. Therefore, you cannot have visitors just running haphazard around your treatment facility. However, a probation officer who has a current client residing in your facility is not just any old visitor. They have a job to do and we need to help them do it.

The best plan is to have a point person in your facility who develops a strong and cordial relationship with all the JRPs that work with clients in your treatment program. This person should be the main contact for all the JRPs and should take the lead in developing and maintaining these relationships. They should do things like take them out to lunch and check in on a regular basis through calls & emails to see if everything is going smoothly.

This point person should also be known by all of your employees as the point of contact, should a probation officer need access to a client. This point person should have a ready list of all clients in the facility who are connected to a JRP and this list should indicate all releases of information that have been signed for whom. This practice is especially important in a larger facility (50 beds or more), because it is difficult to keep track of all this information effectively if each counselor has this information separately.

Another best practice is to offer a semi-permanent office space for a JRP to use if they have to visit your facility on a regular basis. This solution kills 2 birds with one stone. Having a confidential office space for the JRP solves the problem of them having to walk around your facility and dealing with breaking the anonymity of the other clients. It also gives the JRP a space to confidentially meet with their clients with no interruption, and it really gives the JRP a sense that you as a program are taking their needs seriously. Make sure you equip the office with an internet connection, phone and a coffee maker!

Regular Status Updates

One of the best systems to put in place when working with JRPs is to have a consistent method for providing status updates about all the clients in your care. There are several ways to do this. One way is to create a simple one page form that briefly lists the progress and status of each client, and have each counselor fill it out on a regular basis. This form can be sent to the JRPs on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis, depending on the needs of your program.

One weakness of the above method is that if you have a larger program, it is hard to follow up and manage all of your counselors to make sure they are making this report consistently. One way to solve this is to go back to the point person concept we talked about in the access to clients section. You can have a single staff member briefly get a status update on each client, collate these updates and send them to the JRPs all at once. But the bottom line on this point, if you want to increase your professionalism in the eyes of JRPs, having a consistent reporting method is a must.

Provide Quick Response

Probation and Parole officers have some of the fastest paced jobs out there. They have dozens and dozens of individuals on their caseload, and don’t have time to wait around for a return phone call or email. They need quick results and a program must be lightning fast in returning the phone call or email sent by them.

Also, from the perspective of business development, a treatment center must be ready to rapidly respond to a request from a probation or parole officer, if they want to place a client into their treatment center. Many times I would get a call from a parole officer, telling me that they had a client sitting right in front of them, who had just failed a urine screen for drugs. They wanted to give them a chance to get treatment instead of violating them and sending them to jail. The officer called me because they knew I would immediately respond and send transportation to pick up this client. If your program isn’t set up for this type of rapid response, then you will have a hard time getting traction with referrals from some JRPs.

Be Open to Change

This is a huge factor that is overlooked many times by treatment centers. It’s basically this: Is your program open to advice from JRPs on how you could change your programming or policies to accommodate their clients, or are you set in your ways? Of course we all have a program to run, and we run in the way that works best for our governing treatment philosophy. However, clients connected to a JRP have certain unique challenges they bring to a treatment facility, that have to be dealt with.

One simple way to earn a lot of respect and credibility with a JRP, is to ask them this simple question as your start taking in their clients: From your experience with us so far, is there anything we can do better? This one question, asked on a regular basis, will earn you a powerful credibility. It shows that you are open to change and advice. And many times, you’d be surprised at the massive level of experience and wisdom a JRP possesses in how to handle clients in your facility. Make sure that your staff and counselors are continually looking for ways to improve the programming for these clients, and communicate these changes to your JRPs.

Share Success Stories

Finally, a powerful tool that many providers don’t take full advantage of is communicating success stories to the JRPs. And it’s more than just communicating success, its also showing up at court to stand by your clients. The court system will be much more invested in your treatment center, if they can build a lasting relationship with someone representing you, who shows up in court to show solidarity with the clients on a regular basis. Many courts deal with treatment centers that they view as nothing more than a nameless, faceless institution that they push clients through because they have no other option. If you want to make your treatment center stand out from this stereotype, show them that you care about each client by showing up in the courtroom and representing your program.

As you have hopefully seen, making your program appealing to Justice Related Professionals is not rocket science. With just a few intentional and consistent changes, you can make your program friendly for the Justice Related client.