The National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare, a resource center jointly funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Children’s Bureau of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, has created a Child Welfare Training Toolkit. The toolkit provides guidance to child welfare professionals about substance use and co-occurring disorders within families involved in the child welfare system. The toolkit comprises 10 modules – 7 core and 3 specialized areas – that build foundational knowledge to support an understanding of substance use, identify when substance use is a factor in child welfare cases, offer strategies for parental engagement, acknowledge the effects of substance use on children and caregivers, and present steps on how to build collaborations for a system of care.

The National Resource Center for Healthy Marriage and Families will host a webinar on October 10, 2019 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET to discuss strategies for supporting parents of children with special needs. Presenters will share tips on what parents can do to create a hopeful future for themselves as a couple and for their child. Topics to be covered include strategies parents can use after finding out that their newborn has a developmental disability, and resources for helping later in their child’s transition to adulthood. This webinar is intended for service providers who work with parents as well as parents and guardians themselves. Speakers from the UCLA School of Nursing, University of Utah, and Utah Parent Center will present.

This Urban Institute report reviews how patients can access opioid use disorder treatment at facilities in New Jersey that offer pharmacotherapy as a treatment option. The report summarizes phone survey findings about service availability, wait times, Medicaid coverage for treatment, and county-specific data to assess the demand for treatment options.

The National Association of Counties will host the first of a two-part webinar on October 10, 2019 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET to review the collection, management, and sharing of data among health and human services and justice systems to address incarcerated persons with mental illness. Subject matter experts from county health and human services and justice systems at the local level will discuss the processes they use to collect, share, integrate, and analyze pertinent data. The second part of this webinar series will be hosted in December 2019.

This Pew Trusts fact sheet profiles Louisiana’s expansion of efforts to provide access to opioid use disorder treatment. The fact sheet details how new legislation requires the Louisiana Department of Health to increase the number of providers to offer medication-assisted treatment and explains how state Medicaid funds can be used to cover case management at hospital settings. Additional legislation in the fact sheet also highlights requirements that the Louisiana Department of Health conduct a needs assessment and develop pathways for opioid treatment programs to receive approval.

This National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse data set analyzes statistics on substance use, misuse, and abuse among resident fathers. The data analysis examines tobacco, marijuana, alcohol use, binge and heavy drinking, medication and inhalant misuse and abuse, and use of other illicit substances, as well as drug or alcohol treatment. Analysis reflects tobacco or marijuana use in the past 12 months, binge or heavy drinking in the past 30 days, medication or inhalant misuse or abuse and illicit substance use in the past 12 months, and treatment for addiction over the fathers’ lifetime. Data is presented in tables that analyze survey results broken down by race and ethnicity, educational level, and marital status.