Employment and Cost Avoidance An Eighteen Month Follow-Up Study of Indigent Persons Served by Washington State's Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Treatment and Support Act
The ADATSA program provides publicly-funded treatment and support for persons who are addicted to alcohol or other drugs and who are judged to be indigent, unemployable and incapacitated due to their addiction. The first purpose of this study was to examine employment outcomes of ADATSA treatment and of three pilot vocational training programs during an eighteen month follow-up period. The second purpose was to analyze whether public service costs incurred by treated ADATSA clients decreased after treatment, giving rise to a potential cost-avoidance effect of public investment in chemical dependency treatment.