There are a number of workgroups focused on furthering specific areas of our vision. See below to find out more about each workgroup’s mission and activities:
Adolescent ROSC
Contact: Beverly Dotson
Mission: To create a broader and deeper safety net for adolescents and their families in need of entering, progressing, or further maintaining a positive life system of recovery.
Activities:
- Establish teen leadership trainings at agencies throughout the community
- Create a community-wide teen leadership session for recovering adolescents to meet and get to know one another
- Develop a handbook for teen leadership trainings
- Establish an alumni network for recovering adolescents
Monthly Meeting: Second Friday of every month, 10:00 AM (Location rotates each month)
Behavioral Health Integration
Contact: Kay Austin
Mission:
Activities:
- Create a series of CEUs sponsored by different hospitals and organizations to increase cross-training across disciplines
- Hold ethical trainings to increase cultural competencies for multiple disciplines
- Have an event to present on Houston Resource Guide
Criminal Justice
Contact: Frank Davis
Mission: Develop resources and promote ideas to assist justice-involved people in preventing recidivism and diverting from incarceration by providing them with needed avenues to transition and sustain long-term recovery.
Activities:
- Update the criminal justice resource guide for substance abuse, including veteran’s resources
- Strengthen collaboration with numerous groups including people connected with recovery community centers, Santa Maria Hostel, and the VJO
- Promote the use of recovery coaches and trainers with justice-involved persons
Faith-based Recovery Advocacy
Contact: Syreeta Scudder-Early
Mission:
Activities:
Housing
Contact: Don Hall
Mission: Increase awareness of recovery resources among housing providers.
Activities:
- Identify recovery friendly housing
- Identify housing with recovery challenges
- Provide narrative/checklist to service providers and individuals in recovery seeking housing
Recovery Advocacy
Contact: Suzanne Jarvis and Eric Schroeder
Mission: Promote recovery through education and advocacy to build awareness, inspire action, and influence policies that create systemic change.
Activities:
- Screen The Anonymous People in Austin at the Capitol to bring the recovery conversation to the legislative session
- Host “Our Stories Have Power Training” at FRRESH to educate audience on recovery language
- Create recovery education opportunities for hospitals targeting social workers, case managers, and community health workers and offer CEUs
- Launch the Generation Found documentary
Recovery Community Centers & Peer Support
Contact: Dillon West
Mission: To provide sustainable programming for peer recovery community centers for those who are in recovery or working to achieve recovery from substance use and mental health.
Activities:
- Sustain and enlarge support groups for criminal justice population
- Create work therapy program
- Produce a Health Day in James Bute Park next to the HRC for outreach
- Continue to train recovery support coaches as well as train recovery support coaches specifically for transitional age youth
- Revise peer-coaching manual
- Participate in the committee for creating recovery specialist supervision
- Collaborate with organizations within the community (e.g. Change Happens) to create more educational opportunities
- Expand peer recovery supports and work with co-occuring population in treatment facilities
- Compile research on demographics reached within the community
- Compile location of services/events geographically within the community
Working with Communities
Contact: Sandy Olson
Mission: To grow a recovery friendly and resource-rich community that supports people as they work to achieve long-term recovery.
Activities:
- Host the all-day event, Family Recovery Resources Expo and Symposium – Houston (FRRESH)
- Create “first call” training to educate lay members of the community about how they can approach a person who may have substance use disorder and offer hope and support
- Host the SOPHE CEU webinar on the public health impact of addiction recovery through the Society of Public Health Educators