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2010 Sojourner Concert Series Presented by Mercy Hospital Fairfield Mercy Hospital Fairfield presents the 4th Annual Sojourner Concert Series. The past three annual concert series has been a tremendous success with sold out performances that have created a buzz in the community. This year will provide an exciting line up of nationally known performers to include: Saturday, February 6th: JD Souther - SOLD OUT Saturday, March 13th: Livingston Taylor - SOLD OUT Saturday, April 24th: Adrian Belew - SOLD OUT “Mercy Hospital Fairfield has been the presenting sponsor of this concert series since its inception four years ago. We are glad to continue the sponsorship.” commented Greg Ossmann, Regional Director, Business Development and Regional Director, Community Relations for Mercy Health Partners. “The funds raised via this series will help sojourner provide much needed chemical dependency and substance abuse treatment services for individuals and their families. We are very proud to be partnering again” added Amy Erhardt, President/CEO of Sojourner Recovery Services. All shows start at 8PM and ticket prices are $30 for orchestra seating and $25 for all other seats. To purchase tickets online, please visit: www.fairfield-city.org/parks/cac/theater.cfm or by calling 513-867-5348. You may purchase tickets in person at the Fairfield Community Arts Center information desk located at 411 Wessel Drive in Fairfield. Box office hours are Monday through Friday, 8AM to 8PM and Saturday 9AM to 1PM. Concert Series webpage http://www.sojournerrecovery.org/music/2010.htm
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.
Sojourner in the News
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.
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.
Sojourner in the News The article below ran in the Journal News on May 10, 2009 Mother’s Day hope: Sojourner offers second chance
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.
Blake Shelton Fundraiser Concert Sojourner in the News New Sojourner Clinic Sojourner Day in 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 United Way Day of Caring Sojourner on the News Adolescent Program Newsletter
Sojourner Concert
Series Fundraiser
The article below appeared in the Hamilton Journal News on 7/31/06 Art helps recovering adolescents copeBy 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.”
Annual Report
Available Sojourner Receives Exemplary
Prevention Program Award
20th Anniversary
Open House
Sojourner Gets $131K Grant to Help Teens
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Administrative
Offices 294 N. Fair Ave
Hamilton,
OH 45014
Phone 513.868.7654 Fax 513.868.8091
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