Below is a summary of the different levels of care available at programs licensed by the State of Colorado’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Division.

Outpatient (OP): A program licensed at this level will provide a minimum of one hour of contact per week for clients seeking basic substance abuse services.

Intensive Outpatient (IOP): A program must provide a minimum of 9 contact hours per week to each client. For adolescents, this is usually a combination of group sessions, individual sessions and family therapy.

Transitional Residential Treatment (TRT) and Extended Residential Care: This type of program provides a residential setting that offers 5-10 contact hours per week of substance abuse services.

Intensive Residential Treatment (IRT): Intensive residential treatment is conducted in a highly structured 24-hour, therapeutic environment where the clients would live for a time frame to be established by the referring system. The average stay for youth could be anywhere between 30 days to 12 months.

Therapeutic Community (TC): Treatment in therapeutic communities is intensive residential that usually requires clients to work and pay for their stay. This type of program includes the involvement of clients that have been in the program for a significant period of time and have demonstrated a strong recovery path to serve as a “Senior Counselor” to newer residents. There are only a few TCs in Colorado that work with adolescents.

Detox Centers: Provide 24-hour supervised withdrawal from alcohol and most other drugs in a non-hospital setting. Most people stay in detox for a day or two. The detox staff spends significant portion of that time with the residents to help them develop further plans for ongoing treatment services.

roup therapy sessions, individual sessions and family therapy sessions are available in any of these settings, except for Detox Centers.

source: ADAD