MCALISTER INSTITUTE FOR TREATMENT AND EDUCATION INC
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Mission Statement
McAlister Institute’s mission is to provide professional services that heal the lives of individuals and families, improving the quality of life in communities through the miracle of recovery. Since 1977, McAlister Institute has been a critical lifeline for San Diegans impacted by substance use and co-occurring mental health disorders. Today, McAlister Institute serves more than 14,000 individuals with substance use disorders annually.
About This Cause
McAlister Institute’s mission is to provide professional services that heal the lives of individuals and families, improving the quality of life in communities through the miracle of recovery. Since opening our doors with a single outpatient program in 1977, McAlister Institute has grown into one of San Diego County’s largest alcohol and other drug treatment providers. Today, the agency’s services include 24 programs that represent a continuum of care spanning prevention, outreach, intervention, deferred entry programs, education, outpatient treatment, short-term residential, long-term residential treatment, and sober living. Our continuum of care is available to a broad range of populations, including adults, adolescents, ex-offenders, homeless individuals, the under and uninsured, pregnant and parenting women, as well as pregnant and perinatal adolescent girls. Our success advancing wellness is attributed to meeting clients where they are in their journey to recovery by creating an individualized approach to services. We accept all clients, and if determined to need a higher level of care, they are linked with appropriate support through a face-to-face meeting or other warm linkages to ensure care coordination. McAlister Institute has a long-standing policy that no individuals be turned away based on the complexity of their needs or their inability to pay. One strategy to supporting this is to utilize a sliding scale fee when client fees are contractually required. Other responses include ongoing fundraising to meet any funding gaps when clients are not able to afford even the nominal sliding scale fees. Our proven, innovative programs are built on preventing and eliminating substance abuse by helping San Diegans become drug-free, independent, and healthy. Commitment to our clients and our mission have continued to be a catalyst for our evolution, as we have sought to accommodate the diverse and changing needs of the individuals and communities we serve. Attention to these needs has led to pioneering innovations in substance use disorder treatment. For example, in 1981, McAlister Institute opened, Kiva Women and Children’s Learning Center (Kiva), San Diego County’s first gender-specific residential drug treatment program for pregnant and parenting women and their children. At the time, this program was one of only five treatment programs in the United States that admitted children with their mothers. Since then, thousands of women and their children have benefited from these services. Today, Kiva continues to be recognized as a National Best Practice model. Just as gender-responsive treatment has become a best practice, McAlister Institute has been a trailblazer for numerous approaches that are now "standards" in quality best practice care. To date, McAlister Institute has successfully developed, implemented, and managed 11 gender-specific and trauma-informed treatment and recovery programs that are designed to meet the unique psychological, social, and development needs of women and adolescent girls. McAlister Institute’s perinatal programs represent a full continuum of care which spans outreach at Las Colinas Detention Facility, perinatal detox, gender-specific outpatient programs, long-term residential treatment for women and their children, and supportive housing for mothers working to reunify with their children From the inception of Kiva to the most recent launch of McAlister Institute’s New Hope Teen Recovery Center, our commitment to women, girls, and families has been a driving force behind our services, programs, and vision for the future. We believe in services that meet clients where they are at – and that go the extra mile – to ensure that babies are born drug-free. We strive to ensure that women have the tools they need to become good mothers and that families are able to provide for the growth and betterment of their children. Few projects could be deemed more critical to preventing and eliminating substance abuse domestically than these that not only assist mothers to live free of substance abuse, but also provide for the emotional and physical health of her children, and thereby help stem a family cycle of addiction. McAlister Institute’s targeted, age-appropriate services for adolescents are of added relevance to McAlister Institute's involvement in preventing and eliminating substance abuse domestically. These services began in 1990 and now include five adolescent outpatient Teen Recovery Centers, three adolescent residential treatment programs, and AOD education at a juvenile detention facility. Most of the teens who come to McAlister Institute programs are vulnerable, economically disadvantaged and have already spent their earliest years suffering from the vicious cycle of addiction: family members actively abusing drugs at home; absent parents cycling in and out of prison; gang members offering the only protection they can find. Some have also become entangled in the court system for using drugs, missing school, and committing crimes under the influence. Our adolescent (12 to 17 years of age) outpatient programs provide individual and group counseling, individualized treatment planning with each client to develop a drug and alcohol-free lifestyle. Adolescent outpatient also offers intensive day treatment services from thee to five days per week or less intensive day treatment based on intake assessments. The program curriculums include alcohol and drug education, recovery topics, life skills, job skills, parenting classes. McAlister Institute outpatient services are also offered at school satellite locations throughout San Diego County. One program offers gender-specific services for parenting mothers between the ages of 12 to 17. McAlister Institute operates San Diego’s only non-medical residential detox programs for adolescents under the age of 18: Group Home East, Group Home North, and Group Home South. The central focus of the services is to help adolescents to achieve and maintain sobriety. As such, the goal of each of the Group Home Programs is to assist adolescents to become free of alcohol and other drug problems. Attaining this goal requires the critical first step in recovery: physical detoxification. Though treatment plans are individualized and unique to each client, the first goal is always sobriety. Though other agencies offer programs for substance abusing teens, these providers require that the teens be drug and alcohol-free for at least 72 hours before admission. Under such circumstances, families must turn to hospitals and other medical model detoxes for this critical step, so teens often find their first days of sobriety as a result of an emergency room visit or a co-occurring mental health disorder. This creates a substantial barrier to treatment, especially among underinsured and uninsured families: of the individuals who needed but did not receive treatment many reported “no health coverage and could not afford the cost” as the reason for the disparity. Fortunately, our group homes (adolescent residential treatment programs) offer low-cost early intervention and substance abuse prevention and elimination services to help reshape the path of at-risk adolescents. Clients are referred to the program by schools throughout the County, Juvenile Probation, the Juvenile Justice System, Child Welfare Services, and other service providers. In addition, clients come to the program through self-referral and community referrals. In addition to being directly beneficial to hundreds of San Diego County adolescents who receive treatment services at the programs each year, the programs benefit the families and communities of these youth. The degree of these benefits stretches beyond freedom from drug abuse and addiction to impact multiple life domains. Even outside the program walls, the early intervention strategies have proven to be a critical lifeline for San Diego. In the case of student absenteeism, for example, drug abuse is a common cause of truancy. Rather than sentence at-risk teens to juvenile detention facilities, the School Attendance Review Board, Juvenile Probation, and the Juvenile Court System often refer students to McAlister Institute’s adolescent residential treatment group homes. Through these programs, teens receive strength-based treatment in a safe, supportive, and instructive environment so they can develop the tools they will need to avoid a costly and life-altering cycle of incarceration. In affording these young clients needed alcohol and other drug treatment the program may quite literally save adolescent lives. As previously mentioned, McAlister Institute programs for adults include outpatient, case management, residential and sober living services. All are dedicated to preventing/eliminating substance abuse by supporting those we serve in learning how to a live a life that is free of addiction and substance use disorders.