The Community Dual Disorders Team (CDDT) combines intensive case management and therapeutic support for those dealing with a combination of severe mental illness and severe substance abuse disorders. The program is fashioned after a national best practices model that has been effective in reducing hospitalizations, alcohol and substance use, arrests and incarcerations. FCHA has committed a 13-hour-per-week housing specialist and housing assistance received from the City of Fort Collins HOME block grant to the program since its implementation in 2008.
The CDDT is a multidisciplinary, multiagency team from the Larimer Center for Mental Health, the Health District of Northern Larimer County, Connections, and the Fort Collins Housing Authority. The team provides case management, medication management, benefits acquisition assistance, supportive employment, family support, housing, substance abuse counseling and mental health help matched to individual needs and based on participants’ readiness for change. The therapeutic interventions used have been scientifically tested and shown to be highly effective.
The CDDT initially provided treatment and housing services to 12 of Fort Collins’ highest consumers of emergency care services (ER, detox, in-patient psychiatric, jail, EMT/ambulance, police, fire). The cost of administering the program was made up for in the money saved by the reduction of emergency services in the first year. In November 2010 the City of Fort Collins awarded FCHA funds for a two-year extension of housing subsidy funds that it had been awarded in 2008.
