Partnership with Meta House

Meta House is an internationally-recognized treatment program for women struggling with drug and alcohol addiction and their children. Meta House’s services help women stop using alcohol and drugs, and also assist them in tackling a host of other challenges such as past trauma, parenting, poverty, unemployment, poor physical/mental health, etc. Their innovative and holistic treatment programs have been proven successful.

Meta House has three grants from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to provide substance abuse treatment to women and their children. Below is a brief outline of three ongoing programs funded by the grants.

Preserving and Reuniting Families in Recovery (PRFR) provides residential treatment to women with substance use and co-occurring mental health disorders who are pregnant or postpartum and to their children, while also serving children’s fathers, partners, and other family members.

Recovery and Health (R&H) provides outpatient treatment to women with substance use disorders who are at high risk of HIV infection/transmission and to their children.

Housed in Recovery (HIR) provides outpatient treatment and facilitates housing for homeless women and their children in early recovery from substance use and co-occurring mental health disorders.

The Planning Council has developed a long-term partnership with Meta House to help them evaluate the work that they do. We are currently collaborating with them to evaluate the abovementioned programs through pre-post analyses of extensive interview data collected from women at program intake, at discharge, and at six- and 12-month follow-ups.

To know more about Meta House and their services, please go to their website: http://metahouse.org/index.html

Planning Council at the 17th Annual Alzheimer's Memory Walk in Wisconsin

The nation's largest event to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer care – the Alzheimer’s Association Memory Walk – took place in Milwaukee at Mount Mary College on October 2nd, 2010. Team Planning Council participated to raise awareness and help support research to reduce and eliminate the risk of dementia.

Catie Uggeri, Lonna Kruse and Erin Malcolm represented the Planning Council at the walk, raising a total of $245 from co-workers, family and friends. Catie said, “The experience has helped me recognize people who need services. I am more motivated to raise awareness for seniors. I’m glad that we are part of the effort.”

According to Tom Hlavacek, Executive Director of the event, there were over 2,345 participants in total and so far almost $335,000 has been raised to help achieve the mission, which is to eliminate Alzheimer’s disease through research, provide and enhance care and support for all affected and to reduce the risk of dementia through the promotion of brain health. He extended his gratitude on behalf of the Alzheimer's Association to everyone who supported the walk in Milwaukee County, "Your support will make a difference in many lives, including the 50,000 people living with Alzheimer’s disease in Southeastern Wisconsin."

Want to join the fight against this devastating disease? Check out the Alzheimer’s Association website: http://www.alz.org/index.asp