The Haven Receives $400K Grant For Women’s Recovery Program

Battle Creek’s historic Emily Andrus Home has housed the Haven of Rest’s Women’s Life Recovery Program for the past seven years.  It’s been a challenge to keep the doors open at times, but a new grant will certainly help solidify the program.

The Haven of Rest has been awarded a two- year, $400,000 Behavioral Health Grant from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund to expand the Women’s Life Recovery Program (“WLRP”).  The grant will allow them to offer full-time residency for women and accompanying children 12 years old and under.

The Haven’s WLRP presently offers an outpatient-only substance abuse treatment and recovery program for 8 hours per day, five days per week.  Many of the predominantly low-income women who come to this program (only 5% of participants have an income of over $10,000 for the previous 12 months before coming to the program) are presently housed at the Inasmuch House, the Haven’s homeless family & children’s shelter, and travel back and forth to the treatment site (approximately 1 mile) once a day. The WLRP program can last from nine months to one year.

With this Behavioral Health grant from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund, the Haven’s WLRP will be expanded to once again host women and their custodial children in-residence at the 16-bedroom (32-bed) facility.  It’ll be able to serve between 160 and 200 women and their children. This expansion will be implemented by the fall of 2020.

“This is an answer to the prayers of many people. Expanding this program will create the opportunity to end the cycle of homelessness and drug addiction for so many families,” said the Haven’s WLRP Coordinator, Ms. Rossetta Eldred.  “Additionally, the expansion funded by the Health Fund grant will allow the Haven to expand staffing, case management, and therapy hours to serve an in-residence population on a 24/7 basis, 365 days a year,” she added.

"It gives me a humbling pause to think that somewhere right now, in our community, there is a mother in the depths of despair that accompanies an addiction who is praying for a way out, “said Daniel Jones, Executive Director of The Haven.  “God has moved and is moving, through this grant and through the Haven of Rest's Women's Life Recovery Program, to answer her prayer.  We'll have her and her child in a warm, sober, loving environment by Christmas, and the despair of addiction will have been replaced by a Divine Peace."

Once this expansion is implemented, the Haven’s WLRP will be one of the only sites in the State of Michigan to make it possible for women and their accompanying children to stay together in an accredited recovery facility while the mother completes treatment.  The Women’s Life Recovery Program at the Haven of Rest’s Emily Andrus House began in April of 2013 and has been in continuous operation since that time.

The Emily Andrus Home opened on March 6, 1924.  The ladies of the Battle Creek Kiwanis Club recognized the need for a home for elderly women.   Leila Post Montgomery, C W Post’s second wife, gave money to purchase the Packer home on Capital Avenue Northeast, and the home was named for  Leila Post’s mother.  After 6 months of extensive renovation, home opened to nearly 600 visitors who toured the new building.   Building additions were added in 1959 and 1994.