Aplicación de la metodología

Project Skills is divided into three phases having distinctive goals and activities. All three phases are planned to assist clients to improve their skills, to increase their involvement in community activities, and to develop supportive social networks.

Phase I

Phase I lasts 3 weeks. During Phase I, clients meet twice a week for 2 hours per session to learn basic interpersonal, problem-solving, stress-coping, and refusal skills. These skills are:

social introductions and assertive behavior, giving and receiving praise and criticism, structured problem-solving, stress manage-ment, social network assessmanage-ment, and saying "no" to drugs and alcohol.

Each lesson in skills improvement is derived from a problem situa-tion in a behavioral role-play test developed by the authors.

This role-play test was developed by abstracting situations from weekly interviews with clients that led to relapse, in either the client's judgment or in a clinician's judgment. Eighty of these situations were pretested in a role-play format; forty-three were retained in the final instrument. Experimental clients are taught the components of an effective response to the problem situations from the role-play test. Half of the situations are not

rehearsed, so that the degree of the clients' generalization to unrehearsed situations can be examined. The techniques used to teach effective responses are instruction, modeling, role-playing, structured feedback, videotaped feedback, and group discussion.

Volunteer training. Prior to the start of Phase I, volunteers recruited from the community attend an orientation session at which they receive information about Project Skills and learn about the role of the community partner. They are interviewed individually, and those selected to be community partners are asked to make a commitment to be a partner for 9 months.

In our program, this recruitment produced 108 applicants, of whom 57 were selected. The greatest number of volunteers selected to participate after orientation and screening were the result of personal contacts of staff members and from "want ads." In terms of staff time necessary to recruit volunteers, "want ads" were clearly the most efficient producers of volunteers. The screening process was similar to a job application, In the personal inter-view, the volunteers' motives for applying, their personal drug and alcohol history, the level of commitment required by the job, and their responses to troublesome situations that could occur as a result of their participation were discussed.

The volunteer partners meet once a week for 2 hours during Phase I. They learn about residential drug treatment, how to work with clients in the partnership role, community organizations that may be of interest to their client partners, how to help clients find and join organizations in order to meet positive people, and social skills that will help them get to know their client partners.

During these first 3 weeks of intervention, the main goal is to teach clients and community partners the basic skills necessary

for involvement with Project Skills. The two groups are gradually integrated through informal refreshment breaks during the

sessions. At the third session, clients and community partners are paired, based on staff observations of skills, interests, and interactions during the sessions and refreshment breaks.

Phase II

During the 7 weeks of Phase II, clients and their community part-ners find and join a community organization of interest to the client. Once a week, clients and their volunteer partners meet in a training session to plan and evaluate their community networking activities. These activities include calling potential organiza-tions, visiting these organizations together, joining or volun-teering at one organization of interest to the client, meeting nonusers in that organization, and developing a plan to join another organization if interest in the original organization fades. Project Skills' criteria for acceptable organizations are designed to maximize the organization's reinforcement potential for the client and to maximize opportunities to meet prosocial individuals who do not use drugs. These criteria are:

1) The group should meet regularly (not less than once per month).

2) The group must provide the opportunity to interact with the same people over time.

3) Participation should be as a member of a larger group, rather than alone (e.g., playing a team sport rather than solo weight lifting for personal improvement).

4) The organization's activity should be one the client is willing to pursue even if the volunteer is unable to participate with the client.

5) The organization and client should have a shared purpose, interest, or function.

During Phase II, experimental clients also continue to meet separately once each week to work on drug avoidance, problem-solving, social, and coping skills. The skills taught are:

dealing with being treated unfairly, dealing with depression, coping with a slip into drug use, dealing with success, and dealing with personal high-risk relapse situations.

To minimize possible conflicts with collaborating residential programs, community volunteers visit their partner's treatment program and meet the client's counselor and other staff during this phase. These visits help community volunteers to understand their clients better and help residential program staff to understand the supplemental experimental intervention.

At the end of Phase II, a combined promotion and graduation ceremony is conducted for those who have met project criteria.

Clients and volunteers who have completed all assignments of Phases I and II are promoted to Phase III.

Phase III

Phase III, which lasts 6 months, seeks to: 1) increase generali-zation of skills, 2) provide support for clients, who typically leave their residential programs during this time, 3) allow clients to become more fully involved in a community organization while still having the support of a volunteer and Project Skills staff, 4) provide an opportunity to switch community organizations if the first one chosen does not meet the client's expectations, and 5) provide time for actual community reentry problems to occur and be solved with the support of the volunteer, Phase III support group, and staff.

During Phase III, volunteer and client pairs are expected to continue participation in at least one community organization, to meet together for at least 8 hours per month, to continue to use the problem-solving methods learned in Phases I and II to deal with emerging problems, and to maintain contact with others in their training group through a biweekly problem-solving and support group meeting.

Each Phase III meeting begins with an informal potluck dinner and social time, followed by an hour and a half of structured activ-ity, which includes positive reports of personal events and an activity designed to enhance a skill learned in Project Skills.

Either in the middle or at the end of the structured time, stress reduction exercises are practiced.

All client-volunteer pairs are supervised, using a case management system. Each case manager is responsible for contacting one of the pair each week, alternating between the client and the volun-teer. Each month, the case manager writes a report on client-volunteer activities for each pair. Those who complete Phase III requirements yraduate from Project Skills and are no longer active clients. The clinical staff awards certificates of completion to this graduating group.