In the spirit of the holiday season we would like to celebrate 2019 by looking back at the highlights for Families for Addiction Recovery (FAR) and thanking you, our volunteers, donors and community, for making it possible.

2019 was a busy and productive year in which we:

• Supported over 120 parents whose children struggle with substance use disorder (SUD) through our Parent-to-Parent Phone Support Program
   
• Trained our parent volunteers for two days in CRAFT (Community Reinforcement and Family Training), ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) and MI (Motivational Interviewing) by CMC: Foundation for Change
   
• Sponsored the first addiction medicine week at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Medicine
   
• Provided a new professional tool, a pocket guide for in-office management of alcohol use disorder, to the 34,000 family physicians in Canada in collaboration with META:PHI (Mentoring, Education and Clinical Tools for Addiction: Primary Care – Hospital Integration) and the CFPC (College of Family Physicians of Canada)
   
• Funded research by Pine River Institute and Laurentian University, which shows that all family relationships are harmed while youth wait for treatment, and it was published in The Canadian Journal of Family and Youth 
   
• We were invited to join the Toronto Drug Strategy Panel

FAR met with the Office of the Auditor General of Ontario in connection with the audit of Addiction Services in 2019. We are particularly pleased that some of the recommendations of the Auditor General to the Ministry of Health included issues of concern to our families:

• Monitoring the needs of children and youth for addictions services to determine whether additional investment is necessary
   
• Work with stakeholders and other provinces in Canada to identify ways of providing parents with a voice to positively guide addictions treatment for their children and youth
   
• Evaluate the need for additional co-ordina­tion of mental health and addictions treat­ment services for youth, and assess whether the existing service providers have the capacity and skill set to meet their needs or whether new service providers are needed

• Supporting more families through our existing programs and providing online support
   
• Creating short educational videos on topics of interest
   
• Continuing our advocacy efforts to move towards:
  • Accessible, publicly-funded, compassionate, evidence-based treatment on demand
  • Drug policies that protect and reduce harms
  • Health laws that protect and reduce harms