Casa de las Amigas

Casa's central goals are to:
1) Increase the number of women who receive our substance use disorder treatment.
2) Serve those in our community who are most at risk with the least access to quality care.
3) Hold down the cost of treatment by utilizing treatment assistance mechanisms.
4) Continue to meet evolving industry standards of care by hiring additional staff with higher levels of education and experience and continuing to encourage internal staff professionalism development.
5) Expand our Family Program to provide services to help more families break the cycle of by educating and providing the family with tools to address critical issues as they emerge.
6) Develop new programs that support long-term sobriety after clients leave treatment.

In order to achieve our goals, Casa has developed a multi-pronged strategy to increase the number of women served, develop staff professionalism, expand programs and free services, and continue to hold down the cost of treatment.

1) Increasing the number of women served: We are in the process of becoming a Medi-Cal provider.

2) Developing Staff Professionalism: As substance use disorder treatment approaches continue to evolve, Casa has made a commitment to stay ahead of the curve and consistently provide outstanding services to as many women as possible. To facilitate this objective, Casa set into motion a plan to develop our leadership and raise the level of experience and education of key staff to a Masters or PhD. Increasing the professionalization of our staff enables Casa to continue to be a leader in providing high quality substance abuse treatment designed to focus on the unique needs of women.

3) Hold Down the Cost of Treatment: Casa has made a commitment to hold the cost of residential treatment far below the Los Angele area industry average and developed a scholarship program to provide treatment assistance to women that could not otherwise afford treatment.

4) Develop Programs that Support our Clients after they Leave Treatment: We are also focused on helping our clients maintain their sobriety after they leave treatment by providing free aftercare, support groups, and alumni services.

5) Expand our Family Program: Casa is committed to helping women and families address substance use disorder through our expanded Family Program. The families of an addict play a critical role in their recovery. Our new Family Program will address critical issues that addicts and their families face during treatment and teach them the tools to help them during a life-time of recovery.

Casa has focused on developing the infrastructure to increase the number of women served, raise the level of staff professionalism, hold down the cost of treatment, and expand our former client services and Family Program.
Number of Women Served: The restructuring of Admission and Intake offices improved productivity and enabled Casa to increase the number of women served in Residential Treatment by 50%. We expect the number of women to continue to increase over the next several years.
Staff Professionalism: Casa set into action our plan to increase staff professionalism by elevating the level of education and experience of our key program leadership positions to graduate degrees or higher with extensive substance use disorder treatment experience.
Casa's Team includes:
• Medical Director – Physician
• Director of Clinical Services – A Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT)
• Director of Programs - Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT)
• Certified Drug and Alcohol Counselors
• Program Technician – Licensed Vocational Nurse (LVN)
• 24-hour on-call nurse – RN

Hold Down the Cost of Services: Casa proactively seeks to raise income through foundations, individuals and our charity golf tournament to enable us to cover costs while holding down the cost of treatment. We have also partnered with foundations and developed a “Stand for Sobriety" challenge to focus on raising funds to provide treatment assistance to women who have demonstrated: (a) commitment to recovery; (b) potential for long term sobriety; and (c) financial need. Since its inception, our scholarship program has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide treatment assistance to women in treatment.

Aftercare and Alumni Services: Casa is committed to providing our former clients with free aftercare services. We have also recently hired an Alumni Coordinator to strengthen our relationships with former clients through our alumni organization, Las Estrellitas, and alumni events.

Expanded Family Program: Parents, siblings and/or spouses of our clients are required to attend Family Group sessions as part of visitation requirements, which includes discussions centered on: Alcoholism and Addiction Education, Family Dynamics and Addiction, Boundaries and Codependency, Relapse Prevention and the Family Role and Private Therapy.

Our Family Program will provide sessions on Saturdays and Sundays from 9:30 – 3:00 for more than 400 clients and 600 family members (partners, children over 16 and parents) per year. The program was developed and will be overseen by our Director of Clinical Services who has almost 30 years of experience as a MFT with a specialization in trauma and addiction.

All of our goals and strategies are designed with one purpose in mind, to help more women and their families develop the tools for a life-time of sobriety. Evaluating the efficacy of our efforts to increase the number of women served through the restructuring of our Admissions and Intake Offices, Outreach Programs and treatment assistance scholarships will be evidenced by increased occupancy rates.

Increasing staff professionalism, enhancing Family Program, expanding alumni services and providing free aftercare should improve our client outcomes and their overall quality of life. We will measure these outcomes by our clients' ability to achieve treatment goals and through our client satisfaction surveys.
• Clients also complete quality-of-life surveys to provide program feedback;
• The Quality of Life Survey analyzes client quality of life prior to treatment, during treatment and after treatment.
• The Quality of Life Survey is completed by clients on In-take, 30 days into treatment, upon discharge and 1-year post treatment.
• Internal client progress reports are completed throughout treatment and are used to determine if the client is meeting programming objectives. Progress reports are used to evaluate treatment plans and client progress.
• The Family Program survey evaluation tool is currently being developed and will analyze overall family quality-of-life.
• Continued sobriety
• Employment status
• Number of AA meetings clients attend