Enhancement of the Conasauga Drug Court Program

The purpose of the Drug Court Discretionary Grant Program (42 U.S.C. 3797u et seq.) is to provide financial and technical assistance to states, state courts, local courts, units of local government, and Indian tribal governments to develop and implement drug treatment courts that effectively integrate substance abuse treatment, mandatory drug testing, sanctions and incentives, and transitional services in a judicially supervised court setting with jurisdiction over nonviolent, substance-abusing offenders. The FY 2010 Adult Drug Court Discretionary Grant Program will provide grant funds to jurisdictions to implement or enhance a local drug court or to improve, enhance, expand, or financial support drug court services statewide.

Whitfield County will use the grant funds to enhance an adult drug court, the Conasauga Circuit Drug Court, to assist nonviolent offenders with successful rehabilitation from the use of drugs and alcohol. The overarching goal of the enhancement project is to expand and enhance treatment services in the Conasauga Drug Court so that the court has the ability to provide a comprehensive, integrated, community-based, appropriate and effective response to the drug abuse problem within the community. To meet this goal, the project will attempt to achieve the following objectives: serve 18 mental health clients every quarter; help identify mental health related barriers to successful participation in the program; co-facilitate weekly female gender groups to process sexual abuse and trauma issues; identify and build rapport with local mental health specialty providers; hold monthly meetings and quarterly events with the program graduates; start a monthly graduate newsletter and maintain an accurate graduate mailing/contact list; develop website or Facebook page to enhance and maintain graduate contact; establish a graduate speaker's bureau to address community requests; engage graduates to participate in promoting drug court funding with local, state, and national lawmakers; provide 100 EtG tests, 15 Fentanyl tests, and 12 OxyContin tests per year; replace eight computers, two laptops, six printers, and one copier; establish common network to share documents, forms, referral resources; and establish a remote access method into network from remote sites.

CA/NCF