Addiction, Treatment and Recovery

The Betty Ford Center’s acclaimed Children’s Program is now being offered up to 14 times a year in Colorado.

The content of the Colorado program is virtually identical to what is offered at the main Betty Ford Center campus in Rancho Mirage, California and the long-running Children’s Program in Dallas/Ft. Worth, but operationally the Colorado program is quite different. There is no campus, no office, no full-time Denver-based staff (although a part-time marketing/outreach person has just been hired). Instead, staff travel from Rancho Mirage to Denver to conduct the four-day-long sessions, and they are based at a hotel, the Four Points by Sheraton Denver Southeast.

According to Jerry Moe, National Director of the Betty Ford Center Children’s Program, it took five years to develop a model that is, in his words, “both efficient and effective.”

Moe made his first planning visit to Denver back in July, 2002. The first Children’s Program session was offered in May, 2003. “We’ve grown steadily since then,” says Moe, “and we’ve learned valuable lessons along the way. We’ve had the luxury of really being able to fine-tune what we do here, and we now feel comfortable taking the program to another level: offering at least one session every month.”

So-called “satellite sessions” have also been offered in Aspen and Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Jerry Moe is quick to acknowledge an early “seed money” gift from a grateful – and, he adds, “remarkably far-seeing” – Betty Ford Center alumna from Colorado, as well as a generous challenge grant earlier this year from the Denver-based Daniels Fund, as being critical for the growth and success of the Colorado program.

The Children’s Program – at all three sites – is for young people ages 7-12 who are not themselves using alcohol or other drugs, but who live in families impacted by the disease of addiction.

The program utilizes art, games, storytelling, videos, written exercises, role-playing, and recreation to help youngsters build strengths and deepen their resilience. The staff also provides continuing care recommendations for the young people and their families.

At least one parent/guardian is required to participate in the program with the child/children. Ideally, the alcoholic or other-drug dependent parent or caregiver attends the program with her/his child.

Interestingly, says Jerry Moe, “While it is formally called ‘the Colorado Children’s Program,’ we’ve had children and their families here from Ohio, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and Minnesota. Denver’s turned out to be quite a magnet city.”

And the Colorado Children’s Program has also turned out to be a magnet for Colorado alcohol/drug treatment facilities which are themselves unable to offer such unique help to young people.

“Sadly,” says Moe, “as the number of treatment facilities in general has declined, the number of centers trying directly to help kids impacted by the disease has been reduced to almost zero. So there was a real need for us here. In fact, that’s how most families hear of us and come to us. They’re sent by treatment centers, which view us not as competition but as valued partners.”

Jerry Moe and Rancho Mirage-based Children’s Program Coordinator Carole Johnson plan on spending 70 to 80 days and nights away from home over the next year conducting Children’s Program sessions in Colorado.

For Jerry Moe, though, that’s a small price to pay for extending help to so many more children and their families.

“Addiction to alcohol and/or other drugs is a family disease,” he says. “It’s so often passed from generation to generation. We must break the debilitating addiction cycle. And the best way to do that is by reaching out to young people, teaching them about the disease, teaching them to share their feelings, teaching them they are not alone, teaching them coping skills – and that there is hope!”

Might the fine-tuned Colorado Children’s Program template be used elsewhere in the United States – or the world?

According to Jerry Moe, the biggest roadblock vis-à-vis fulfilling that vision is the current shortage of addiction specialists who are trained in working with children impacted by the disease.

Training. That’s where, he says, the recently-established, not-for-profit Betty Ford Institute may come into the picture.

“Stay tuned,” he concludes.

More information about the Colorado Children’s Program is available at 800-854-9211 or from the BFC website, www.bettyfordcenter.org.

Related posts:

1. BFC Children’s Program Evaluated in First-Ever Scientific Study