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Thunder Road and Special Projects
Your Gift Will
- Provide treatment scholarships to teens from families who lack insurance or resources
- Provide four new vans to replace the aging ones currently used to transport our clients
- Provide a Vocational Training program designed to supply our older teen clients with much needed job readiness and employability skills for transition to their communities as productive working citizens
- Provide for a continuation of our Addiction Awareness series, a comprehensive 10-week series of educational workshops designed as an early intervention tool for parents, caregivers, teachers, and community youth development professionals
See www.thunder-road.org for more details.
Background
In response to a growing and increasingly alarming need in the Bay Area, Thunder Road opened its doors in 1987 to teens struggling with issues of substance abuse. Since then, it has provided residential treatment and counseling to over 4,000 children and their families.
Thunder Road is a unique program in a variety of ways, including:
- A mandatory requirement for parents, guardians, or a significant adult in the teenager's life to participate in the recovery program by attending twice weekly support group meetings and special weekend events
- The only program of its kind in Northern California to offer treatment scholarships to youths whose families lack the resources or public assistance to pay for treatment
The Challenge:
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Funding for the treatment of children addicted to alcohol or other drugs is declining, making it very difficult for Thunder Road to meet the demand for its services, programmatic needs of its clients, and costs of maintaining its physical plant. Each year, over half of our clients receive partial or full subsides. Unfortunately, the need for scholarship care far exceeds Thunder Road's ability to provide it. |
A study completed in 2000 by the State of California Department of Mental Health illustrates the alarming fact that 13% of the adolescent population in California suffers from serious mental health/substance abuse issues. Yet only 4% of that population is receiving any treatment or services for those problems.
At the same time, a Harvard study (Teng, et al) revealed that addiction treatment ranks among the top 10% of the most effective health and life saving measures from a list of over 500 medical and safety interventions. A California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs study concluded that for every $1 invested in treatment services, taxpayers saved $7 in law enforcement, welfare, public health, and crime costs.
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