2010 Sojourner Concert Series Presented by Mercy Hospital Fairfield

 

 

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Sojourner Recovery Services awarded $45,000 grant.

Hamilton, Ohio – July 13, 2009 - Sojourner Recovery Services has been awarded a grant for a second year support expansion for their adult residential treatment facilities by The Greater Cincinnati Foundation.

Sojourner now has the opportunity, with this grant, to increase intake capacity while also decreasing waiting list demands for those seeking treatment. The Greater Cincinnati Foundation’s continued assistance demonstrates a vote of confidence in the work being done at Sojourner and has helped them lead the way in creating programs for people challenged by chemical dependency.

It is through this spirit of collaboration that Sojourner can continue to fulfill its mission: To provide quality, comprehensive services for primary substance abuse and/or related mental health issues in a caring a compassionate manner.

 

 

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Sojourner in the News
The article below ran in the Journal News on June 18, 2009

New play area a ‘dream come true’
Thanks to donations, kids will no longer have to play on barren lot By

Richard Wilson
Staff Writer

HAMILTON — The barren lot of gravel and concrete next to Sojourner Recovery Services has been transformed into a safe place for children to play.

The new play area, at 516 High St., officially opened Wednesday afternoon, June 17, and includes swings, a slide, an oval track for tricycles and newly planted grass.

The playground was made possible entirely through donations and is a “dream come true” for Sojourner clients and staff, said Development Director Kim Mihevic. Children who live with their mothers at the residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility will no longer have to play on the sidewalk or in the street, Mihevic said.

Tom and Betty Owens, owners of Sharonville-based Ameridian Specialty Service Inc., provided for 95 percent of the project — donating equipment, materials and labor.

Betty Owens, a Sojourner board member, said she was inspired to see the project through to completion.

“When I walked on the grounds, and nothing was here. ... These kids don’t have a safe place to play,” Owens said. “I thought, ‘What if my children were in that situation?’ We had the ability to help.”

The Youth Philanthropy Committee of the Hamilton Community Foundation donated $3,400 to the project.

Ben Hemmelgarn, who will be a senior at Ross High School, is president of the philanthropy group, which is made up of local high school students. He said the committee wanted to get involved with the project because it would provide joy for children for years to come.

link to article

Video Tribute to Donors

 

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Sojourner Recovery Services awarded CARF–CCAC accreditation

 

Hamilton, Ohio – May 20, 2009 — CARF International announced that Sojourner Recovery Services has been accredited for a period of three years for their rehabilitative programs and this is the first accreditation that the international accrediting body has awarded to Sojourner.

This accreditation decision represents the highest level of accreditation that can be awarded to an organization and shows the organization’s substantial conformance to the CARF standards.

An organization receiving a Three-Year Accreditation has put itself through a rigorous peer review process and has demonstrated to a team of surveyors during an on-site visit that its programs and services are of the highest quality, measurable, and accountable.

Sojourner Recovery Services has been helping individuals and their families fight the bonds of alcohol and or drug addiction for over twenty-five years. With four residential and one outpatient facility Sojourner is able to impact and change the lives of over 1,300 men, women and adolescents residing in Butler County each year.

CARF is an independent, nonprofit accrediting body whose mission is to promote the quality, value, and optimal outcomes of services through a consultative accreditation process that centers on enhancing the lives of the persons served. Founded in 1966 as the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities, and now known as CARF, the accrediting body establishes consumer-focused standards to help organizations measure and improve the quality of their programs and services.

 

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Sojourner in the News
The article below ran in the Journal News on May 10, 2009

Mother’s Day hope: Sojourner offers second chance

By Richard Wilson
Staff Writer 12:59 AM Sunday, May 10, 2009

HAMILTON — This time last year, Delores Crawford would do anything to get her fix.

Prostitution. Stealing. Whatever it took to buy more crack cocaine.

“It pretty much took everything I had,” said the 31-year-old mother of five. “I had to either turn it around or it would get the best of me.”

Clean and sober now seven months, this Mother’s Day is full of hope for the Hamilton resident as she looks forward to graduating from the drug rehabilitation program at Sojourner Recovery Services.

She is one of dozens of women who each year either voluntarily or through a referral get a second chance at Sojourner.

The nonprofit organization, named after the 19th century former slave Sojourner Truth who pushed for women’s rights, has five residential facilities and an intensive outpatient facility in Hamilton.

The agency started in 1984 to provide aid to women, but now it provides services for men, teenagers and adolescents, and is the only residential drug-rehab program in Butler County, said Amy Henkel, women’s residential program director.

Completing the program, which in addition to counseling may include detoxifying and mood-stabilizing medication, is only the beginning for Sojourner clients.

“We make sure they have the tools necessary to stay sober,” Henkel said, “ But it’s up to them once they leave here.”

For Crawford, who since January has lived at the High Street facility with her 11-year-old daughter, Natasha, it’s a matter of making up for lost time and rebuilding relationships with her family.

“That’s the most unconditional love that I’ve ever seen in my life,” Crawford said of her children. “Their forgiveness was given so freely. ... They’re confident that I can go back to the person I was.”

Clean and sober mothers look to rebuild their lives

Drug addicts and alcoholics sometimes have to hit rock bottom before they decide to change.

For Amber Wilcher, that moment came on a bitterly cold night, when none of the “crack houses” that she frequented would let her in. Her mom had all but disowned her; the 29-year-old was pregnant with her fourth child and had two of her children in tow.

“At that point, I knew I didn’t want that life anymore,” she said. “When I went to jail I was happy.”

Despite using crack cocaine through half of her pregnancy, Wilcher delivered a healthy baby only days after getting released from jail. After years of “self-medicating,” Wilcher entered Sojourner Recovery Services and has been sober for more than three months. She said she’s finding out about herself.

“You kind of forget who you are. This place gave me an opportunity to stop,” Wilcher said while holding her newborn in the lobby at Sojourner’s women’s residential facility on High Street.

The need is great

Wilcher’s story is not uncommon, said Program Director Amy Henkel, whose compassion and empathy overflows when she hears clients tell their stories.

Sojourner serves 100 to 120 clients at any given time at their five residential facilities in Hamilton. They serve about 1,300 annually, including intensive outpatient services for teens and women.

But funding has forced cutbacks in recent years. Sojourner has lost $350,000 in the last three years, and “the need is greater than the capability,” Henkel said.

“There’s people dying on the street because we don’t have enough space,” she said.

Henkel echoed what many of the clients say about the counselors who lead one-on-one and group discussions at Sojourner. They’re doing it for the right reasons.

“The counselors get to know these girls and they care about them.”

Henkel said one of the biggest misconceptions about drug addicts is that they’re viewed as having something morally wrong with them.

“They’re sick people trying to get well,” she said. “It’s a disease that they’re battling with.”

Starting over

Leslie Brewer said she has a plan to stay sober. After graduating from the Sojourner program, the 27-year-old mother of four said she now has the tools she’s going to need, using mental reminders and a counselor whom she can call at any time.

“I’m going to take it one day at a time. I know what I want. I’m going to build on that each day,” she said.

Brewer said her crack cocaine addiction drove her away from her family, she said, and onto the street working as a prostitute. The day she regrets most, she said, was the day she left home and abandoned her two oldest daughters.

“That drug took over and consumed my thoughts,” she said. “I tried to (quit) on my own but it didn’t work.”

Brewer is close to moving out of the Sojourner facility. She said she’s looking for apartments and wants to go to college.

Link to article
 

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Blake Shelton Fundraiser Concert
Sunday January 18th, 2009 Blake Shelton performed a benefit concert for Sojourner at the Aronoff Theater in downtown Cincinnati. This successful event raised money for Sojourner and included a silent auction with autographed memorabilia.

Sojourner in the News
An article appeared in the Hamilton Journal News on Sunday, August 31, 2008 regarding cuts in funding to Sojourner.

New Sojourner Clinic
Journal News Article January 2008

Sojourner Day in Fairfield
Tuesday August 14th, 2007 was "Sojourner Recovery Services, Inc. and Mercy Hospital Fairfield Day in the City of Fairfield"

This is in recognition of the Sojourner Concert Series. A copy of the proclamation can be seen on here http://www.sojournerrecovery.org/images/proclamation.htm 
 

Adolescent Art Show at the Fitton Center
During the month of August artwork created by Sojourner clients will be on display in the Student Gallery of the Fitton Center for Creative Arts in Hamilton. The artwork was created by clients from Sojourners Adolescent program. The clients were participating in the Arts in Common Program through the Fitton Center. Artist Mary Catherine Ruby worked with the Sojourner adolescent residential clients weekly with painting, drawing, and many other projects.

United Way Day of Caring
Sojourner participated in the April 20th United Way Day of Caring sponsored by Duke Energy. Volunteers from Duke Energy helped give the landscaping at the new administrative office a makeover. We are greatly appreciative of their efforts and hard work. You can see more images on this page.


 

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Sojourner on the News
Two Sojourner clients and a Sojourner staff member were interviewed for a Channel 5 News story. It aired April 5th and the link below will take you to the video. "Super-Pure Meth Hits Tri-State Streets - WLWT Cincinnati"
the video link

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Adolescent Program Newsletter
View the Adolescent Program Newsletter by clicking on a link below:

PDF version   Flash version

If you don't have it installed already, click this link to download the flash player.

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Sojourner Concert Series Fundraiser
The First annual Sojourner Concert Series presented by Mercy Hospital Fairfield took places at the Fairfield Community Arts Center. Funs were raised  for Sojourner Recovery Services.

Read article from Journal News

 

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The article below appeared in the Hamilton Journal News on 7/31/06

Art helps recovering adolescents cope

By Richard O Jones, Staff Writer

HAMILTON — Tabatha, 16, has become “obsessed with polka dots.”

She presents a large painting of dots in various shades of pink on a navy blue background and a ceramic tile with a similar motif, along with another tile decorated with the logo of her favorite band.

Her art work will be exhibited for the first time this week at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts.

During August, artwork created by clients from Sojourner’s Adolescent Residential program will be on display in the Student Gallery of the Fitton Center. The clients received art lessons from the Arts in Common Program, which brings the arts to people who might otherwise not be able to participate. Artist Amy Edwards has been working with the Sojourner adolescent clients weekly with painting, drawing, origami and other projects.

A reception for the exhibition will be 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday. The Fitton Center is located at 101 S. Monument Ave. in Hamilton.

For Tabatha, who is in the seventh week of her second round of residential treatment at Sojourner, the art has been a way to express through painting and drawing. She hopes it will keep her from having to come back to Sojourner again. Her first stay, when she was 13, lasted 18 weeks, she said.

“I sort of fell off the track and my grades plummeted down,” she said. “I started to re-use and I wrote a poem about one of my uses that a friend found and got frightened. She told the school and the school sent me here.”

The poem talked about the pills she had been using and ended with, “That’s the only thing I want to feel/It is the only good wonderful happiest feeling I have.”

But now she has another happiness in art.

“It’s a way I can express how I feel because I have a problem with talking,” she said. “It’s a way to express myself in a better way.”

Sojourner, a Butler County agency that provides chemical dependency treatment for families and individuals, operates six different programs in the area.

The Sojourner Residential Treatment home can house up to 16 adolescents. Many of them are sent their through the juvenile court system, but they also get referrals from area schools and Butler County Children Services.

Their holistic approach treats the whole person and the whole family through each stage of the recovery process.

Betty Huff, director of the residential treatment program and known to the dozen teenagers now staying there as “Grandma Betty,” said that her clients aren’t the bad kids people sometimes think they are.

“They’re just good kids who have made bad choices,” she said. “One of the reasons for doing the art show is to open up the world to them. Even though the Fitton Center is right here in Hamilton, they don’t experience that part of the world.”

Huff said she’s always on the lookout for volunteers who can come and share their hobbies or interests with her clients. In addition to art classes, they’ve learned landscaping and gardening, Spanish, dancing and other hobbies.

“We can help them get clean and sober. But if we don’t give them alternatives to drinking and drugs, then we’re not doing our job,” Huff said. “Otherwise, when they get out of here, they go back to the same neighborhood and do the same things. We hope that they can learn to express themselves in a new way, and making art is new to a lot of the kids.

“They need to see that you can have fun not using drugs because a lot of them don’t believe that.”

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United Way Day of Caring
On Friday April 28th 2006 Sojourner participated in the United Way Day of Caring. Sojourner Home located at 449 3rd Street hosted 6 volunteers from US Bank. The volunteers worked along with clients in the program all afternoon to clean, remove weeds, plant flowers, plant bushes and even some strawberries. The end result was a much improved look for the house.

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Annual Report Available
Sojourner's 2004-2005 Annual Report is now available. The report details outcomes and other important information covering the fiscal year 04-05 (July 1st, 2004 through June 30th, 2005).

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Sojourner Receives Exemplary Prevention Program Award
The Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services (ODADAS) honored exemplary alcohol and other drug prevention programs at the Annual Ohio Prevention and Education Conference (OPEC). Sojourner's Perinatal Program received this award at a ceremony in December. The Exemplary Prevention Program winners are among Ohio's best in demonstrating a wide variety of effective violence, alcohol, tobacco and other drug prevention programs in diverse communities.

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20th Anniversary Open House
September 7th, 2005
 

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Sojourner Gets $131K Grant to Help Teens
By Linda Ebbing - Journal News 2005

HAMILTON— Sojourner Recovery Services hopes to use more than $130,000 in grant money to help adolescents with substance-abuse disorders.

Sojourner, a Butler County agency that provides long-term support to families and individuals affected by chemical dependency, received $131,500 from the Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati.

“The big push now is to implement evidence-based practices ... (curricula) that have been implemented and tested and show viable results of success,” said Lu Carson, associate executive director of Sojourner Recovery Services.

The foundation recently gave out almost half a million dollars in grant money to help organizations incorporate evidence-based practices into their programs.

Sojourner Recovery Services provides comprehensive care to families and individuals affected by chemical dependency — regardless of ability to pay.

Sojourner has been implementing these evidence-based practices in all of its programs, Carson said, including a program called Seven Challenges developed by clinical psychologist Dr. Robert Schwebel.

Adolescents need treatment intervention that differs vastly from adults’ treatment, Carson said.

“The seven challenges in Schwebel’s program are adolescent-friendly,” Carson said. “And so teens tend to do very well utilizing that model. We still use 12-step in our adult program and expose our teens to the 12-step program.”

The seven challenges is a treatment philosophy that is “empowering,” she said.

“The teen becomes a part of the treatment ... they are not just told what to do,” Carson said.

The grant has allowed Sojourner Recovery Services the opportunity to work with Schwebel directly, Carson said.

“We are just so grateful to the Health Foundation for their support and guidance,” she said. “What’s particularly exciting for us is that the grant allows us to be trained by Dr. Schwebel as well as his coming routinely to evaluate the program.”

For more information about Sojourner Recovery Services, call 868-7654.

The rate of alcohol and other drug use among adolescents age 12 to 17 in the Greater Cincinnati area has hovered at 15 to 20 percent for the past six years, according to information from the Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati. Yet, less than 10 percent of youth who are using alcohol or other drugs receive treatment in any given year, according to the needs assessments completed by local alcohol and other drug service funding organizations in 1999-2001. These needs assessments were funded by the Health Foundation.

“The substance use disorder treatment field is far ahead of where it was 10 years ago in understanding what really works in helping youth,” said Donald Hoffman, president and CEO of the Health Foundation. “But, we have used adult models for treatment of adolescents for too long. The Health Foundation is proud to be helping agencies prepare for and implement these new practices.”

The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati is an independent foundation dedicated to improving community health and access to health care for vulnerable populations. The foundation awards grants to non-profit and governmental organizations for selected health programs and activities in Cincinnati and 20 surrounding counties in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.