Representatives of the Arkansas Center for Addictions Research, Education. and Services (Arkansas CARES) accepted the award at an APA meeting in Chicago today. The Institute on Psychiatric Services of the APA selected Arkansas CARES to receive the award, which includes a $10,000 prize from Pfizer Inc. The award is for large academic or institution-sponsored psychiatric programs.

Cynthia C. Crone, MNSc, APN., executive director of Arkansas CARES; G. Richard Smith, M.D., chairman of UAMS Psychiatry; Winston Brown, M.D.; and Linda Worley, M.D., accepted the award. Dale P. Svendsen, M.D., chair of the 2002 Achievement Awards Committee of the institute, commended the program "on this well-deserved recognition."

Dr. Smith commented last week, "Arkansas CARES is an outstanding program that we are proud to sponsor. Everyone in the department congratulates the fine staff of Arkansas CARES for this wonderful recognition."

Arkansas CARES offers intensive treatment for drug addiction in combination with mental health care for mothers and children and lessons about parenting, finding a job, paying bills, and other life skills. Its leaders say the comprehensive residential program is more effective at boosting troubled families into long-term independence than typical drug treatment, which may consist only of outpatient therapy, or prison, which forces children into foster care. Women and their children live together at Arkansas CARES while the women get "clean" and many learn, for the first time, how to be good mothers. The program is an innovative approach to breaking the cycle of childhood abuse, mental illness, drug addiction, prostitution and crime, poor parenting, and loss of parental rights.