An evaluation is a defined process with a clear endpoint: a written report you can use. This page walks through what happens at each step, what you receive, and how to tell which evaluation fits your situation. If you are not sure you need one at all, the short questionnaire sorts that out before anyone pays for anything.
There are three evaluations, plus one focused add-on. They differ in depth, not in standards: every one is independent and held to the same ethics. You don’t have to pick the right one yourself. The questionnaire and intake review determine which fits, based on the question you need answered, how complex it is, and what the report is for.
A formal substance use evaluation that meets Minnesota’s DHS 245G requirements. This is the right choice when a court, a program, or a referral asks for a standard assessment and a level-of-care recommendation. It covers the six standard areas clinicians use to judge severity and match a person to the right level of care.
A deeper read. It includes everything in the standard assessment and adds a written picture of what is actually going on, plus an early look at whether a person’s words and actions line up. It fits situations that need more understanding than a placement decision alone. This early look is the first layer of the Arlucent Seventh Dimension™, our structured way of checking whether stated goals and real behavior match.
The full evaluation. It is built for complicated, high-stakes situations where several things overlap at once, whether clinical, legal, family, or work, and have to be handled in one thorough document. It includes the complete Arlucent Seventh Dimension™ analysis. When the situation calls for it, a separate standalone report can be commissioned alongside it.
The measurement on its own. Four areas scored against published anchors, and a named pattern describing how they fit together. It can be commissioned alongside a Comprehensive Assessment, or on its own from a focused interview, for cases where whether words and actions line up is the main question.
The same instrument, applied to justice-involved and re-entry situations, with four added contextual variables covering the pressure a person is under, how stable their situation is, what support actually exists, and whether the change has become theirs. See the Re-Entry Evaluation page.
Any Procedural Faith Index™ deployment, standard or re-entry, run as a series rather than once: a baseline, then repeat administrations at intervals. It answers whether change is holding, which a single evaluation cannot.
When an evaluation includes a level-of-care recommendation, that is a clinical opinion given at the time of the assessment. It is not an authorization, a placement decision, or a utilization review, and it may need to be revisited as new information comes to light.
If you are sending someone for an evaluation, or relying on one, here is what the report gives you. It lays out the clinical findings, the reasoning behind them, and, where relevant, a level-of-care opinion, in a form built to hold up under scrutiny. The report keeps three things clearly separate: what was documented, what the analysis found, and what the evaluator concluded. Every evaluation is independent. It is not tied to either side of a case and is not an advocacy service.
Every evaluation rests on the ASAM Criteria, the standard most professionals rely on to judge severity, risk, and what level of care a person needs. We apply those six standard areas as structured clinical judgment, not as a checklist or a formula.
To that we add the Arlucent Seventh Dimension™. The standard measures don’t check one thing: whether what a person says they want actually matches what they do, and whether it holds up under pressure. The Seventh Dimension™ is a structured way of looking at exactly that. The first six areas describe how serious a situation is. The Seventh Dimension™ adds whether it will hold.
See how the Arlucent Seventh Dimension™ works →
All of this runs on the same underlying method, called STABLE™: a structured way of measuring behavior, tracking it over time, and checking whether it holds as conditions change. You don’t need to know any of it to get an evaluation. It’s simply how we keep the work consistent and defensible from one case to the next.
A few boundaries keep the work independent. An evaluation is not treatment, therapy, or ongoing care, and keeping those separate is what lets the report stay neutral. Any opinion in it, including a level-of-care opinion, reflects the evaluator’s professional judgment at the time of the assessment and may need to be reconsidered as new information appears. We don’t provide treatment, therapy, advocacy, or ongoing services, and the evaluator’s role ends when the written report is delivered.
For the full detail, our Clinical Standards and Scope of Practice document sets out the methods, ethics, independence requirements, and limits of the work. It is published for transparency and does not by itself create a service agreement or clinical advice.
Clinical Standards & Scope of Practice (pdf)
DownloadNot sure whether an evaluation fits your situation? Start with the short questionnaire. It sorts that out before anyone pays for anything.
Arlucent Assessments · Independent Evaluation
Minnesota
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