The Family Intensive Treatment (FIT) Team was created as a service delivery model to integrate substance use and mental health treatment using a team approach model. Heartland for Children recognizes that quickly taking treatment to the family is an important component for early engagement and retention in treatment.

In-home interventions and Family Mentors will be utilized to achieve parental engagement in services and improve safety and well-being for children.

The model is unique in that it uses mentors as team members of the treatment team to help support parents. These mentors themselves have experienced success with substance use treatment and have been substance-free for at least three years.

The mentors and clinicians play a vital role on the team, providing guidance, support, and timely response to parents who are working on their addictions and healing from the trauma they have experienced.

An abundant amount of research has documented the inter-relation between substance use, child abuse and neglect, and family violence.