Ohio’s Recovery Housing Conference Draws Large, Diverse Crowd

On October 7 & 8, 2013, representatives from across the State of Ohio met at the scenic Deer Creek State Park lodge for a Recovery Housing Conference and Training. The room was packed! Staff had to roll in two extra tables to accommodate the number of attendees representing a diverse cross section: State and local government agents, treatment centers, homeless advocates, mental health housing providers and AOD housing providers were all at the discussion table.

Day 1:

Tracy Plock, Director of Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services set the stage with the vision of OhioMHAS, which includes recovery housing. Roma Barickman and Alisia Clark celebrated the impressive outcomes of the Access to Recovery program. Jason Howell and Dave Sheridan gave an overview of NARR and recovery residences. Kristen Paquette of the Center for Social Innovation and Lori Criss of the Ohio Council gave an overview of: Recovery Housing in the State of Ohio – Findings and Recommendations from an Environmental Scan.  A panel of providers representing the 4 levels of support discussed their programs and a panel of local government boards discussed their involvement with recovery support.

Day 2:

Jason and Dave presented case studies that highlighted various ways of starting a NARR affiliate organization. The audience divided up into 6 different working groups to plan out Ohio’s action steps.

All in all, Ohio has got it going on!

 

 

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