(NEW YORK TIMES) Tina Rosenberg, March 7, 2018 — Renee Beavers, a social worker in Connecticut, visits mothers — and a few fathers — who have young children and substance use disorders.

Her clients in the state’s Family Stability Pay for Success Project spend intensive time with Beavers and the others on her team: three visits of up to an hour each week, for at least six months.

Beavers makes sure the children are safe, does a supervised drug screening — she or a male counterpart goes into the bathroom and watches the client urinate in a cup — and then talks with clients about parenting, and about quitting drugs.

Combining drug treatment and parenting programs in the home, where there are no transport or child-care barriers, not only protects children. It also takes advantage of a drug user’s key motivation to get well.

“Being able to parent a child is the primary positive reason for sobriety,” said Karen E. Hanson, who teaches social work at the Yale Child Study Center and developed the methods the project employs. “We’ve heard many times, ‘I really was not worth stopping for, but my child was.’”

via Issuing Bonds to Invest in People – The New York Times.