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