A Chicago native who developed Bartholomew County’s first comprehensive addiction treatment program for jail inmates has moved out of state after stepping down from the position she has held for two years.
Former jail addiction treatment coordinator Theresa Patton has already moved to California, where she will serve on multiple consulting projects in different communities, Patton said during a telephone interview from Rancho Mirage, California.
“I’m a consultant by profession,” Patton said. “I usually don’t ever work for anyone. That’s just not my thing.”
It was during her tenure in Columbus that the addiction treatment processes she created became known as the BART program – an acronym for “Begin, Accept, Reveal and Transform.”
While working up to 60-hour a weeks nearly became a norm, Patton said she never made it a secret that her position at the jail was temporary. When Patton came to Indiana after finishing a series of projects in 2019, it was with the understanding that she would move to the west coast within a few years to resume her consulting work, she said.
“Theresa’s qualifications far outweighed our expectations and what we were looking for,” Bartholomew County Sheriff Matt Myers said.
During her two decades of working in the field of addiction and mental health, Patton had not only designed private residential treatment programs in both Indiana and North Carolina, but also expanded existing programs for detoxification, partial hospitalization and outpatient care of adults.
Prior to her arrival in Bartholomew County, Patton also developed freestanding treatment facilities in several states, as well as lectured on treating co-occurring disorders and psychopharmacology at universities.
Patton said she will work three to five hours a week as a consultant for the Alliance for Substance Abuse Progress (ASAP) in Bartholomew County for the rest of this year. Focusing on such areas as program oversight, services consolidation and finding a permanent successor, this consultation work will be done remotely through video conferencing or telephone, she said.
During her final day on Sept. 21, top administrators at the sheriff’s department presented Patton with a plaque commending her “great enthusiasm and for going above and beyond what this position required.”
“We promised we would keep people out of jail,” Patton said regarding the requirements. “That was the mission they gave me.”
This basic responsibility was achieved by developing patient placement criteria that included software that helped Patton determine the most effective path toward guiding each individual participant away from drug relapses or committing additional offenses.
What might be considered “above and beyond” were the addition of new programs such as trauma inform care for women and an aftercare program to help jail inmates with cases stalled by the pandemic, Patton said.
“But for me, the ‘pièce de résistance’ was identifying the need for housing recovering addicts,” Patton said. “Not just the type of housing everybody has been talking about for years, but housing that is specific to the program.” Work in this area will be continued by other agencies in the months ahead, she said.
It usually takes five years to make a conclusive assessment of a jail addiction treatment program, Chief Deputy Maj. Chris Lane said.
Nevertheless, Myers said he’s convinced BART will save the community millions of dollars through a sizable drop in property crime, as well as a reduction of the jail population.
Myers described the program created by Patton as not only one of the best in the state, but in the entire nation.
“I can say that because we track these people when they leave, and if you look at the former inmates and addicts that have stayed clean, it has been far above anyone’s expectations,” Myers said.
Since the BART program is now well-established and staffed, finding a permanent successor will not be as difficult as it was to find and hire Patton in 2019, Lane said.
“So the person who follows her won’t have to all these acronyms behind their names,” Lane said. “Theresa built this program, so now we just have to do our due diligence to find someone suitable to come in and keep the machine running.”
When asked what he thought had been Patton’s top successes, Lane said it was her ability to persuade addicted inmates to start thinking about where they are now, and where they want to be in the future.
Myers says her greatest attributes were her personality, empathy and enthusiasm.
“She is a strong lady who believes in holding individuals accountable without being judgmental,” Myers said. “I also think Theresa was effective because she built a rapport with her clients, and genuinely cares about their progress. That’s how you change lives.”
Strong community support from several agencies, including ASAP, also deserve credit for the program’s advancements and successes, Myers said.
