Carlos Baldovinos traveled to San Diego on August 12 to celebrate the public release of a federal best practices toolkit aimed at addressing addiction treatment within the homeless community a project he helped build from the g round up.Baldovinos, executive director of the Mission at Kern County, was among roughly 22 professionals from across the country who gathered in Washington, D.C., in the spring to work with the Trump administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the nation's drug czar to develop the toolkit."I didn't get much notice. It was maybe 4 or 5 day notice about this unveiling that was gonna happen down in San Diego and, and I'm telling you this is something that we have worked towards, um, to get to that position of unveiling it to the public," Baldovinos said.The toolkit outlines best practices for working with individuals dealing with addiction within the homeless population, covering topics including program length, transitional housing, long-term mentorship, and workforce development.Baldovinos said one of the most debated topics during the two-day Washington meeting was how long recovery should last."A lot of times folks are stuck on, well, recovery should only be for a treatment program, 28 days," Baldovinos said.He pushed back on that view, drawing on his own experience."In our experience, the recovery is for the long term with people. It's not just 28 days you're cured, you're healed, you're ready to go. A yearlong program with some transitional mentoring program additionally added to that. But if we look at recovery, it could be a long term process through somebody's lifetime. They just have to stay committed and connected," Baldovinos said.He also emphasized the importance of workforce development as part of the recovery process."You gotta have something when somebody's done a program or done something you wanna have something for them to land on so they can take care of themselves in the long term," Baldovinos said.Baldovinos said peer support and mentorship are critical to keeping people on track through both good and bad days."Basically I call it a large family around you they're they wanna ensure your success in the long term. So that to me it's that mentoring piece as well that peer support it's gotta be part of the recovery, part of anybody's recovery," Baldovinos said.He said he was specifically brought into the working group in part because of his perspective on faith-based recovery."If somebody's faith having that relationship with Christ is also very good for your long term recovery. So that was part of it too. If you look at the toolkit, there is a faith side in there that's integrating faith in somebody's recovery," Baldovinos said.The toolkit was published on the HHUD website, the White House website, and the HHS website on the day of the San Diego unveiling and was distributed to publications across the country."For me personally, it's something to be proud of being part of something like this because this is my, this is what I do for work and for me it became very easy to talk about it because we've, I know that there is success," Baldovinos said.This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracyStay in Touch with Us Anytime, Anywhere: Download Our Free App for Apple and Android Sign Up for Our Daily E-mail Newsletter Like Us on Facebook Follow Us on Instagram Subscribe to Us on YouTube ...read more read less