ABOUT PROSPECT HOUSE
The mission of Prospect House, Inc. is to provide high quality drug and alcohol treatment in a long-term residential setting to men who are without money, insurance, or other resources. We mean to lighten the burden for these men, to bring sobriety within reach, and help rekindle dignity through self-respect and self-support.
Prospect House’s mandate is to carry out its mission, and it is in its sixth decade of doing just that, in a social and economic climate not always friendly to that mission.
Prospect House, Inc. is a non-profit charitable corporation, run by its own Board of Directors, and founded in July, 1970, by the Reverend John Lovatt (and others) to serve the indigent male alcoholic. It began in the Parish House of the Nativity Episcopal Church, to feed, house, and treat its clientele. Since then, five other nearby houses have been acquired, four to house more residents in treatment, or, following that, in transitional housing, and one for an administrative/office/counseling building. We now have 60 treatment beds, up from 20 at the start, and we now operate an additional 19 alumni beds in the neighborhood. Prospect House has enlarged both its capacity and its range of services over the years. Initially a halfway house for the recovering alcoholic, it now provides long-term treatment in a structured six month minimum program for alcoholics and/or drug addicts, plus a three-quarter-way residential program for men who are further along, some having rejoined the workforce or become full-time students. Some men stay a year or more, and the longer they stay, the better their chances of lasting recovery.
Objectives remain what they were at the beginning: treatment, and the provision of a long-term residential recovery environment for indigent men suffering from the disease of chemical dependency.
Programs currently provided are residential treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction to a medically-indigent population, with all that that implies: providing food, shelter, professional counseling (group work and individual sessions), referrals to other agencies and clinics for psychiatric, medical, and dental problems, and referrals for vocational rehabilitation assessment and literacy and GED programs. Also provided are special programs: a successful outreach to the recovering African-American community called the “Black Support Group”; work with victims of PTSD and substance abuse in “Welcome Home Group”, a Vietnam Veterans support group, recently expanded to accommodate in-country veterans of the Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars; and a group which serves ex-offenders, addressing their barriers to recovery, called “Life After Bars”. We do a group called “Focus”, serving the chronic relapser, using techniques developed by Terry Gorski, available alike to in-house residents and the larger community. We do a group that helps people with a gambling addiction. We provide residential services to the dually-diagnosed (mental illness plus chemical dependency) in collaboration with the Veterans Hospital and the Health Resource Center. We also provide a Family Group. All of these programs work in harmony to promote recovery, self-sufficiency, and the restoration of integrity and self-respect.
Prospect House has been located in the same residential neighborhood, now becoming known as the Incline District, since our inception in 1970. It is on Hawthorne Avenue in the racially integrated neighborhood of Price Hill, convenient to bus lines and close to the inner city where many of our target population live. It is a cluster of six buildings, all on adjoining land, forming a compact campus. There is an administration building providing office space for four counselors, two group meeting rooms, office for the Director, Assistant Director, Case Manager, and Executive Assistant. The largest building, called the Parish House, provides housing for thirty men, a professionally equipped kitchen, a large meeting hall (capacity 200), and two smaller meeting rooms (capacity 30 and 50). The building is of historical significance, and adjoins The Church of the Nativity, now owned by Prospect House. The Parish House is “homey” rather than institutional in its look and tone. Its undercroft houses our CFO, an assistant, and the finance department. There are four other residence houses, housing 30 men altogether, and each having one meeting or common room (capacity 20). To the total of 60 men living on our campus, we have now added 19 beds, distributed among four houses in our neighborhood, three of which we own, all within a half-mile of us, and all reserved for alumni of our program. These are regarded as permanent housing. They stay full, and have become real neighborhood assets.