Coolmine is committed to vision of recovery which strives for an enhanced quality of life greater than just abstinence from drugs and alcohol. Through service provision embedded in a continuum of care, we support clients to stabilise, detoxify and remain drug and alcohol free. Furthermore, we are committed to assisting them to improve their quality of life; enhance family and interpersonal relationships, progression of health, housing, educational, training and employment needs.

This improvement in quality of life is reflective of the traditional Coolmine ethos and also in more recent years the national, European and international call for rigorous drug treatment programme evaluation and rehabilitation outcome studies. In response to the first national longitudinal drug treatment outcome study ‘Research Outcome Study in Ireland Evaluating Drug Treatment Effectiveness’ (ROSIE) Coolmine are delighted to contribute to national and international literature through the imminent publication of our longitudinal study. The findings are encouraging including that 71% (n=80) of study participants reported
to be free from illicit drug use two years after intake to a Coolmine service.

Further evidence of the impact of Coolmine’s work, is the significant progression made on the implementation of the previous strategic plan 2012-2015, set within a difficult economic backdrop as core funding was being reduced. Notwithstanding this position, the organisation’s capacity to think innovatively resulted in the following key achievements being progressed largely from within existing resources:

· Refined the length of stay of the therapeutic community residential treatment phase and established a dedicated step-down programme with life-long aftercare initiatives to support long term recovery.
· Increased service activity to meet presenting client need through more outreach, assessment and pre-entry work; established a Community Alcohol Treatment Programme, Cannabis/Mental Health programme, Recovery through Nature (RtN) programme, and increased medical assessment and care planning supports to enable complex needs and detox admissions (see appendix 4).
· Increased service capacity to meet presenting demand; Coolmine Lodge male residential from an average of 22 placements in 2012 to 32 in 2015 and Coolmine Ashleigh House female residential from an average of 12 placements in 2012 to 24 in 2015 (see appendix 4).
· Developed further partnership collaborations and formal service level agreements with other statutory and voluntary providers enhancing access to treatment, ensuring appropriate care planning and maximising progression to housing, health, education, training and employment supports
· Contributed to formal research at national and international levels as we hosted the European Working Group on Drugs Orientated Research (EWODOR) presenting findings from our longitudinal research outcome study as well as studies that focused on the implementation, integration and impact of evidence based interventions.
· Integration of evidence based interventions including Community Reinforcement Approach (CRA); Mindfulness based Relapse Prevention (MBRP) and Parents under Pressure (PuP) across all our programmes.