For Good: Grant helps OperationPar use cutting-edge technology in meeting mission

Keeping families together has been a 45-year mission of OperationPar, a local nonprofit that provides addiction and mental health treatment in seven Tampa Bay area counties.

And now technology is playing a major role in helping that mission succeed.

Thanks to a $1.5 million grant from the Substance and Mental Health Services Administration  – to be distributed over the next three years – the nonprofit will have the funds to invest in more electronic tablets, eServices training and online support programs to help women in recovery.
  
“What we’re doing here is cutting edge,” says OperationPar COO Dianne Clarke. “The rest of the country is paying attention.”

The money will be earmarked for FAIR (Family Achievement in Recovery), which provides care for women who have experienced trauma, substance abuse and mental health issues, and aids them and their children in recovery and returning to productive lives. Participants live in PAR Village, a community setting of 15 homes and a development center in Largo, and are aided by “wellness navigators” who provide one-on-one assistance.

Clarke says part of the funding will go to renovate some of the older houses in the village. The rest will allow staff to “experiment, learn and share results of enhanced treatment” using electronic services, such as the tablets and Web applications.

“We’re stepping outside the box in providing treatment this way,” she says. “There are possibilities we know about, and so many more we want to explore.”

Among the uses with a tablet: Clients can set up a treatment plan and communicate quickly with their counselors, Skype with children who are staying with relatives or in foster care, have access to 12-step meetings online and stay on top of an evolving schedule.

OperationPar, with administrative offices in Pinellas Park, provides women in recovery an opportunity to keep their families intact while going through a substance-abuse program. Clarke says there are just four programs in Florida that offer the family option; OperationPar is the only one in the Tampa Bay area. 

“We look to solve two issues at the same time – substance abuse and child welfare,” Clarke says. “Ultimately, we want families to be healthy and to stay together. That is a substantial grant that will make a big difference in achieving those goals.”

OperationPar was founded in 1970 by Shirley Coletti, a Pinellas County mother who discovered her daughter was experimenting with drugs. Funded through grants and donations, it now serves more than 15,000 men, women and children a year – with about 4,000 in treatment every day in its seven-county region.