Breakthru House

Breakthru House served 63 clients/family units in 2023 from all areas across Georgia. Breakthru House transitional services and housing promotes supportive living for women who have completed treatment and need to remain in therapeutic environment. Breakthru House offers a safe place to rebuild their lives as they go through the process of reintegration into a healthy lifestyle. In 2023, Breakthru House successfully completed a 3-year international accreditation survey (CARF).Breakthru House Therapeutic Childcare (TCC) is a constellation of services provided to children of substance abusing women who are in treatment. This nurturing parenting program is family-centered and designed to build nurturing parenting skills as an alternative to abusive and neglecting parenting and child-rearing practices. The parenting program has been extensively field tested and validated to teach nurturing skills to parents and children while reinforcing positive family values.Long-term goals include: preventing recidivism in families receiving social services, lowering rates of multi-parent teenage pregnancies, reducing the rate of juvenile delinquency and alcohol abuse, and halting intergenerational cycles of child abuse by teaching positive parenting behaviors.TCC also provides an environment where women in recovery can learn to interact in a nurturing, constructive and healthy manner with their children, relearning or learning healthy parenting skills. Parents and children learn how to play games, sing songs, and have fun as a family. TCC is an opportunity to support families in recovery with services and programs that can help all family members heal from the effects of substance abuse.The organization celebrated 54 years of service in 2023.Breakthru House implemented several new programmatic changes, including on-site nursing services; music and dance therapy (phase-one client programming); life coaching services (phase-two client programming); play & recreation area (TCC); weekend sensory play for mothers and their children (TCC).Long-term community and service provider partnerships were established and expanded with the Clarkson Medical Center, Recovery Consultants of Atlanta, and Scott Candler Library/DeKalb County Public Library, as well as with the Girl Scouts and the Eagle Scouts.A new collaboration with The Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University awarded a grant to Breakthru House for Community Engaged Learning. Breakthru Houses clients and clinical staff were the sole panelists for the Fall session of the Rollins School of Public Health SDOH Panel Conquering Drug and Alcohol Addiction: A Dialog with Women in Greatest Need. The partnership with Emory also enabled summer internships to four 2nd-year MPH students.