October 6-8, 2008

Crowne Plaza
Boston-Natick Hotel

24 Miles from Logan Airport
20 Miles to Boston, MA
Phone: (508) 653-8800

Sign up Today

$495.

Space is limited to first 50 people. Includes instruction materials, breakfast and snack, Continuing Education Credit, and a complementary copy of Get Your Loved One Sober, by Robert Meyers and Brenda Wolf.

check Refund Policy: Cancellation up to 7 days before the training: entire refund minus $25 administrative fee. No refund within 7 days of training.

Who should attend

Psychologists, mental health professionals, social workers, and other helping professionals working with families. Expertise in substance abuse is not necessary.

AIR logo

Sponsored by
Allies in Recovery, Inc.
Northampton, MA
For more information call
Jeanine Bedard at 413-210-3724

Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT)

Supported by 20 years of clinical research, CRAFT is a comprehensive behavioral program that teaches families to optimize their impact while avoiding confrontation or detachment. CRAFT methods are evidence-based and provide clients with a hopeful, positive and more effective alternative to other intervention programs.

CRAFT was one of the treatments singled out for its own segment in the recent HBO Addiction series backed by NIDA and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Meyers and Allies in Recovery were featured in the CRAFT segment.

As a CRAFT Interventionist, you’ll learn how to help families identify practical and highly effective ways to move their loved one toward treatment, while simultaneously improving their own lives.

For decades it was believed that there was nothing one could do to help substance-abusing loved ones until they hit bottom or that heavy-handed confrontational tactics were necessary. Bob Meyers has developed a remarkably effective and gentle method for working through family members and concerned significant others to help their ‘unmotivated’ loved ones get into treatment. It is no longer necessary to feel helpless and hopeless.
- William R. Miller, Ph.D., distinguished professor of psychology and psychiatry and author or Motivational Interviewing

CRAFT is very successful at influencing treatment-refusing alcohol and drug abusers to enter treatment.

  • Across a number of clinical studies, CRAFT consistently gets 64%-86% of cases into treatment, typically after only five sessions.
  • In comparative studies, these high treatment-engaged rates stand in contrast to the engagement rates of the Johnson intervention (30%) and Al-Anon (0%-17%).
  • CRAFT’s efficacy has been shown with ethnically diverse client populations, and with other individuals in a variety of types of relationships with the substance abuser (spouse, parent, adult child, sibling, partner, grandparent, etc.).
  • Regardless of whether a family member’s loved one enters treatment, the family member typically feels less depressed, anxious, angry, and has fewer physical symptoms than before treatment.

Become a CRAFT Interventionist and learn to train your clients in the following CRAFT skills: →

  • Employ effective positive communication
  • Identify and use positive rewards
  • Develop a roadmap for understanding loved one’s substance use and pattern
  • Recognize substance use
  • Take domestic violence precautions
  • Allow for the “natural consequences” of use
  • Practice self-care without detachment
  • Get a loved one into treatment

Learning Objectives. Understand...→

1. the behavioral theory and research behind CRAFT
2. specific CRAFT procedures (e.g., reinforcement strategies, allowing for natural consequences) to increase the chance that loved one will enter treatment
3. specific CRAFT procedures (e.g., Happiness Scale, Personal Goals) to help family member make their own personal goals a priority as well
4. methods for identifying client-specific reinforcers (rewards) that can influence behavior change
5. issues of using CRAFT in a group setting

Robert J Meyers, PhD →

has published over 50 scientific articles and co-authored five books on addiction, including Get Your Loved One Sober: Alternatives to Nagging, Pleading and Threatening and Motivating Substance Abusers to Enter Treatment: Working with Family Members. A research associate professor of psychology working at the University of New Mexico’s Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse and Addiction, he has been in the addiction field for 30 years and at the University of New Mexico for over 20.

Proposed Schedule and Format →

Monday, October 6
  • 8:30-9:00 Registration
  • 9:00-10:00 Case Example and Scientific Support for CRAFT
  • 10:00-10:45 Introducing CRAFT to Concerned Significant Others (CSOs)
  • 10:45-11:00 Break
  • 11:00-11:30 Practice Exercise: Introducing CRAFT
  • 11:30-12:30 Functional Analysis (Roadmap) of Substance Using Behavior
  • 12:30-1:30 Lunch
  • 1:30-2:30 Practice Exercise: Functional Analysis
  • 2:30-3:00 Domestic Violence Precautions
  • 3:00-3:15 Break
  • 3:15-3:45 Communication Skills Training with CSO
  • 3:45-4:30 Practice Exercise: Communication Skills Training
Tuesday, October 7
  • 8:30-9:15 Case Example: Pulling Together the pieces of CRAFT
  • 9:15-10:15 Positive Reinforcement of Clean, Sober Behavior
  • 10:15-10:30 Break
  • 10:30-11:15 Practice Exercise: Positive Reinforcement
  • 11:15-12:00 Negative Consequences for Substance Use: Withdrawing Rewards
  • 12:00 -1:00 Lunch
  • 1:00-1:30 Allowing for the Natural Consequences of Substance Use
  • 1:30-2:30 Practice Exercise: Negative/Natural Consequences
  • 2:30-2:45 Break
  • 2:45-3:15 Helping CSOs Enrich Their Own Lives: Happiness Scale, Goals
  • 3:15-4:00 Practice Exercise: Happiness Scale, Goals
Wednesday, October 8
  • 8:30-9:30 Inviting the Substance Abuser to Enter Treatment
  • 9:30-10:15 Practice Exercise: Inviting the Substance Abuser
  • 10:15-10:30 Break
  • 10:30-11:00 Common Problems that Arise When Implementing CRAFT
  • 11:00-12:00 CRAFT in Group Format