Today we would like to share with you a video from our annual ATCPCC 2013, Addiction Treatment Centers and Professional Consortium. Here in our guest lecture video series is Sandra Mistretta of Casa Serena on Non-Profits and Low Cost Recovery. We have a transcript of the lecture for you to follow:
Casa Serena is a unique program. It’s a non-profit. It’s been in business for 54 years and it’s unique in the sense that we don’t take insurance. It’s $2,400 a month for the first 90 days of treatment which is a really unique experience if you’re familiar with the cost of most recovery programs, and we offer everything that other facilities usually offer with yoga, meditation, but we’re not a medical model. We’re a social model. We do process groups, education groups, self-defense. We offer outside therapeutic alliances, and we offer alcohol and drug counseling as well and lots of life skills.
We try to reconnect the women with either continuing their education or getting a high school diploma, as well as perhaps starting a part-time into a full-time job, becoming self-supporting. After 90 days, they can graduate and go to our graduate house but if they have children, they can go to our Oliver House. And many times they’re not reunified with their children, so we’ll work closely with systems, CalWORKS, CWS to get them reunited with their children and then the work really begins.
We incorporate parenting programs. We use CALM which is a service here that works with child abuse. We do a lot of domestic violence solution work, rape crisis, lots of therapeutic outside interventions. We do a lot of community collaboration, and we do a lot of support there as far as alcohol and drug counseling, and we also implement the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
There’s a lot of joy that happens in the housing center and a lot of heartache, too. Oftentimes the children, once they are reunited with their mother, and usually most of our clients are of the lower economic scale and once they’re reunited with their mother, oftentimes behavioral issues come up. So we also help facilitate with the client what it’s like to advocate for their child, and that’s a big word that we use — advocate for your child, advocate for yourself.
Most of our clients are usually on a scholarship, and our scholarship funds are usually really low. So if you’re interested in donating to Casa Serena, you can definitely visit our website which is www.casaserena.org and you can certainly call if you need help, if you’d like an intake. If you’d just like some information, we have a lot of information on our website and we’re local to the Santa Barbara community, and it’s a great place to get sober.
