The mission of The Bridge House is to support whole life recovery for those suffering from addiction.

On December 18, 1984, New England Aftercare Ministries (NEAM, Inc.) was incorporated under the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Articles of Organization, General Laws, Chapter 180 as a 501c3: “To alleviate human suffering and distress; to better and improve mankind; to establish a center or centers for social service; to assist prisoners in re-establishing themselves in society; and to acquire personal and real property for the application thereof to the foregoing purposes.” In 1987, Bridge House was opened as a prison reentry halfway house with the purchase of 18 Summit St. Framingham, MA.

A decade later, in 1997, NEAM signed a contract with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to become a licensed recovery home under the Bureau of Substance Abuse Services (BSAS). Under this new license, The Bridge House became what it is today: A residential treatment facility for men suffering from substance abuse (which may still involve reentry from jail as well as TSS/CSS referrals). That same year (1997), NEAM purchased the adjoining 20 Summit St. house and now operates the two homes, providing 33 men with substance abuse problems at a time, age 18 and over, with whole life recovery support in a residential setting.

Over this past year, The Bridge House has provided individualized residential treatment services to 100 residents through a critical time in their addiction recovery journey. The whole life recovery process involves more than direct addiction counseling care. Services include screening, intake, orientation, assessment, treatment planning, counseling (individual, group, and family), case management, crisis intervention, client education, referral, consultation, and record keeping, education of residents on community resources available to meet their needs including medical and psychological services, job training and high school equivalency schooling.

The Bridge House has expanded its counseling staff and actively supported licensing educational needs. The Bridge House’s lead supervising counselor is LADC-I (Licensed Addiction Alcohol and Drug Counselor I, the highest level of licensed addiction counseling in Massachusetts). There are four LADC-II (Licensed Addiction Alcohol and Drug Counselor II) and several others working toward LADC-II licensure.

Weekly evaluations of the program have led to the addition of more therapeutic groups, assessment-based response to relapse recovery and NARCAN training for both staff and residents, as well as aftercare counseling for graduates to ease their transition into the community.

 Our most pressing needs are capital improvements. Serving 33 men "residentially" takes its toll on our two properties.

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As a Massachusetts licensed recovery home, The Bridge House program provides a structured, sober environment for individuals recovering from addiction to alcohol and/or other drugs. The Bridge House program emphasizes recovery and treatment within a therapeutic setting. Residents are encouraged to integrate with the community and to access community resources, including self-help groups and employment.

Each treatment program is individualized and guided by each man's own recovery objectives, which are laid out in regularly updated treatment plans. The Bridge House provides weekly, individual counseling to help the residents meet their recovery objectives and treatment plan goals. Additionally, The Bridge House provides daily group sessions where residents share challenges and explore new recovery tools together.

The Bridge House also encourages its residents to utilize necessary outside resources, such as anger management groups, mental health therapy, community health assistants, educational and vocational training and VA resources. There are numerous opportunities for connection with these resources within walking distance of The Bridge House.

In order to be considered for admission into The Bridge House program, potential residents must provide documentation of at least 30 days sobriety, generally provided by drug testing at an inpatient treatment facility, TSS, CSS or other drug and alcohol treatment facility.

Applicants must submit a completed Bridge House application and resident agreement, provide bio/psych/social assessment from any current treatment facilities, and provide criminal background information if currently incarcerated.

Short-Term Outcomes

Outcomes are measured on a multi-pointed, progressive path.

· During treatment, The Bridge House counsels its clients individually and forward, for measured and area-specific progress while accommodating area-specific recovery setbacks.

· Upon program completion, long-term success is measured through post-discharge follow-up surveys.

· Since a growing number of graduates stay in the local area and remain active in alumni groups, The Bridge House is also able to witness the living success of some graduates on a weekly basis.

Long-Term Outcomes

The Bridge House’s ultimate goal is for the men served to achieve the health and wellness benefits of complete abstinence from drug use and alcohol abuse. That said, outcome measurements are nuanced to reflect improvements that occur during treatment even when complete abstinence is not achieved.

For the most part, The Bridge House’s population enters treatment as homeless, jobless, with broken social and family relationships, interrupted education, mental illness, physical health problems, and criminal justice system involvement. Each of these problems, along with the movement from drug and alcohol abuse to living in sobriety, become points of outcome measurement, including:

· From substance abuse and addiction to sobriety

· From homeless to housed

· From no HS diploma to obtaining high school equivalency

· From lack of healthy social relationships to having a healthy social network of support

· From ill health to attended health with primary care support

· From untreated mental health problems to mental health issues identified and managed

· From owing back child support to paying back and keeping child support current

· From unresolved or probationary criminal justice issues to resolved court cases and completed probations

Overall program success is measured by beds occupied and days served per the ESM state enrollment and disenrollment statistics, by surveys done by the state-run Bureau of Substance Abuse Services (BSAS), by program surveys and interviews, and by counselor notes.

Counselor support is available 24/7 at The Bridge House along with weekly one-on-one individual sessions and up to 12 hours of weekly therapeutic group sessions.

The Bridge House uses licensed addiction counselors in its program so that its counselors are equipped to understand the physical, mental health, social and familial consequences of addiction and the tools necessary to facilitate client recovery. Specifically, LADC-I credentialing includes a masters or doctoral degree in behavioral sciences, a minimum of 270 hours of training related to substance abuse counseling, 300 hours of supervised practical training, 6,000 hours of supervised alcohol and drug counseling work experience and successful completion of a written examination. LADC-II training includes all but the advanced degree.

Once a clinician is licensed, he or she is required to complete 40 hours of continuing education units (CEUs) every two years – so regular trainings are provided on-site at The Bridge House to provide ready access to CEUs that will keep staff current in addiction counseling interventions that are consistent with evidence-based practices related to preferred client outcomes.

Therapies that counselors are trained in and supervised to use include motivational interviewing, a directive, client-centered style of counseling with the goal of eliciting behavior change by helping individuals explore and resolve ambivalence to change; cognitive–behavioral interventions, focused on changing internal thoughts and beliefs, as well as reactions to those beliefs, from negative into positive; community reinforcement, examining the social environment for its role in encouraging or discouraging drinking or drug use, with the goal of making a sober lifestyle more rewarding than the use of substances; relapse prevention and recovery, including behavioral contracting; and social skills training, including employment and financial counseling.

Bridge House counselors also lead therapeutic groups focused on specific areas of need such as healthy choices; refusal skills; stages of change; spirituality that is respectful of all faiths and non-faith beliefs, including such techniques such as prayer, meditation and mindfulness exercises; Christian spirituality, offered on a voluntary basis; anger management and dealing with trauma, grief, guilt and shame; relapse prevention and recovery; gambling awareness; and life management.

All counseling is under LADC-I supervision and holds to the Principles on Effective Treatment set by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Community resources in close proximity to The Bridge House include Advocates (behavioral health); Framingham District Court (probation); Framingham Public Library; One-Stop Career Center (job assistance); MBTA (transportation services); Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance; Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission (education and career assessment); MetroWest and Kennedy Health Centers; Program Rise (STD/HIV Support); SMOC (high school equivalency, job training, housing, behavioral health); Social Security Administration; and Spectrum Health (opiate replacement and anger management and batterers programs).

The Bridge House partners with and coordinates specific services with local community agencies in the areas of psychiatric evaluation and pharmacological therapies; medical assisted recovery including methadone and suboxone; HIV/STD education prevention and recovery; high school equivalency completion; family services; legal aid; court agencies for probation, drug court diversion, family court, including child support; post-graduation housing needs; and 12 step meetings such as AA or NA.

The Bridge House’s core asset is its counseling team – and not every employee has a case load, but every Bridge House employee does some counseling as part of his or her job and receives training throughout the year to increase effectiveness in this.

Key employees are:

· Executive Director

· Program Director

· Clinical Supervisor

· Development Director

· House Supervisor

· 6 full time addiction counselors

· Weekend Staff

· 5 Off-Shift Supervisors

The state requires that each staff member receive one hour of in-service training each month and one hour of supervision each week. In addition, The Bridge House requires that licensed staff maintain their licensing credentials and provides an educational allocation for staff continuing education and licensure.

Using resources such as Adcare Hospital and the New England Institute of Addiction Studies, as well as other training providers approved by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Bureau of Substance Abuse under the Department of Health, The Bridge House’s staff receives more than the necessary continuing education units (CEUs) for maintaining licensures for its clinicians over two years, as the state requires.

On-site trainings cover a range of topics, including motivational interviewing, maintaining professional and clinical boundaries, CPR, NARCAN, drug overdose prevention training, HIV/STD prevention and awareness, tobacco addiction prevention and recovery, cognitive behavior therapies and diagnosis tools.

As a recovery home licensed in Massachusetts under the Bureau of Substance Abuse Service of the state’s Department of Health (DOH), The Bridge House maintains data collected on all enrollments and completions in the state’s Enterprise Service Management (ESM) software system. This software supports The Bridge House maintaining its client roster, program enrollments, service plans, case management plans, and encounter documentation. It also provides comparison of data against other programs sorted by a range of demographic data points, including utilization trends, living status, enrollment and disenrollment reasons, referrals, employment detail, and other state services.

While individual client information is confidential, top line ESM data provides visibility into progress towards The Bridge House’s overall treatment goals.

The Bridge House also conducts its own research using anonymous resident surveys related to client satisfaction that are conducted during the treatment process and individual phone follow-up surveys post treatment.

Many areas on the ESM are integrated into The Bridge House’s client treatment planning through referral. These include high school equivalency, vocational training, literacy and ESL services, medical or emotional treatment and medication support as well as TB and STD testing and treatment. Key points for The Bridge House in the ESM are the numbers of enrollments/disenrollments and bed days served, along with the other data noted above.

Weekly counselor and staff meetings provide opportunities for self-assessment and the program draws on outside level-of-care expertise for in-service trainings and to check assessments against what is seen in the field and what they shown as best practices.

In 1987, The Bridge House opened as a privately funded prison reentry ministry. When Massachusetts formed the Bureau of Substance Abuse Services (BSAS) in 1992, The Bridge House program also became a state licensed substance abuse recovery home. In time, however, conflicts arose between the BSAS license requirements and the prison reentry counseling components of the program, which ultimately put The Bridge House at risk of being shut down due to discrepancies with the BSAS service model.

In August 2011, the BSAS stepped in to help The Bridge House recalibrate to its guidelines and resolve related financial challenges. The Bridge House started the recalibration process with a staff of four, including new executive, development and program directors who were paid from a line of credit, with a resident count of eight.

In the years that followed, The Bridge House achieved success with compliance that surpassed level of care standards and returned the program to financial health, with support from BSAS consulting assistance and increased financial support of churches and private donors. The Bridge House also added masters-degreed counselors and trainings for staff that have contributed to its current standing as a well-respected recovery program in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.