Structure, technology, and goal attainment: An organizational study of drug abuse treatment programs.

摘要

Historically social work has had a significant presence in the field of addiction treatment. The profession's unique bio-psycho-social-spiritual perspective requires practitioners to attend not only to the major presenting problem of an individual but also to the personal and social issues that affect an individual's functioning. The number of people in need of drug treatment services has increased significantly in recent years. In addition, individuals who enter treatment for drug disorders often present with serious co-occurring problems such as medical conditions, mental health issues, family troubles, lack of adequate housing or employment and criminal justice involvement. Often, the nature and severity of these problems require additional supportive services beyond the core addiction treatment services.; The purpose of this research was to explore the relationship between the availability of supportive services and successful client outcomes from an organizational perspective. The research was guided by an adaptation of Scott's (1998) model of organizational analysis which was adapted from Leavitt's (1965) organizational change in industry model. This research project was a secondary analysis of data collected on 71 drug treatment programs located in 11 large metropolitan areas in the United States. The major hypotheses were, (1) Drug abuse treatment programs that offer a greater number of on-site supportive services will evidence higher rates of successful client program completion, (2) Organizational structural variables (i.e. modality, program size, average caseload size, size of professional staff, and social work staff) will influence the degree to which programs offer supportive services that in turn will influence the rate of successful client program completion.; The findings from the bivariate analysis did not support hypothesis 1. However, hypothesis 2 evidenced support from the findings. Programs with a smaller client capacity offered greater amount of services, and as a result had a higher rate of goal attainment. Programs with smaller caseloads tended to offer greater services, and as a result had higher rates of goal attainment. Also, programs that provided a variety of supportive services, and included a broad array of staff had successful client program completion.; A limitation of this study is that it is a secondary analysis, which inherently may be limiting compared to an original study. Despite this fact, the study serves to our growing understanding of the organizational correlates of service delivery and successful outcomes in drug abuse treatment programs. This study should advance our understanding of the importance of various organizational factors involved in delivering supportive services in substance abuse treatment programs.