Ellen’s House gives women more options
The crowd at the ribbon cutting for Ellen’s House, a new sober living house for women, including those with children, heard how rare such facilities are.
As we learned in the Thursday edition of the Butler Eagle, there are only a few hundred sober living houses statewide, and just a few are in Butler County. Houses exclusively for women are rare, and ones that also allow children are even more scarce.
That this one exists is a credit to the Ellen O’Brien Geiser Center, which owns and operates Ellen’s House.
Dave Hilliard, the president of the Gaiser Center Board, explained during the ceremony Wednesday the hope is to give both women and children a sense of leading a more normal life.
“If women in recovery can be reunited and live with their children, that's wonderful, that’s a win-win,” Hilliard said. “If their kids can be with them, hopefully they will relax and do the things they need to do and appreciate being with their kids and that will help them cross the finish line.”
A place like Ellen’s House is an essential part of any recovery program, because people leaving treatment need a safe, supportive place, and returning to their old environment often would endanger their recovery.
Donna Jenereski, director of Drug and Alcohol Programs for Butler County, explained that treatment programs offer people education and tools, and part of being successful is making sure people can put those tools to use.
“All of these things are important, but in the end, they are meaningless if we do not focus our attention on ensuring individuals have a safe and supportive environment to return to after treatment,” she said.
Ellen’s House, from it’s charming Victorian exterior to the attention paid inside making it “feel like you’re coming to grandma’s house,” as Joe Mahoney, Gaiser Center executive director, put it, is exactly that.
We wish both the program and its first residents, who could move in by the end of the summer, years of success.
— JK
