About this Recovery Home
Olivia's House is a women's recovery residence on 2nd Avenue South in Birmingham, Alabama, the seat of Jefferson County. Operated by Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Centers, it provides holistic residential care for chemically dependent women and their children, with stays of up to twelve months.
A Women's Recovery Residence in East Birmingham
The house sits on 2nd Avenue South in the eastern part of Birmingham, inside the city's MAX bus network and within reach of downtown and the medical district. It serves women only. The setting is residential, which matters here more than usual, because children live on the property alongside their mothers, and a treatment address that feels like a home is part of what makes that workable.
Recovery Housing Where Children Stay With Their Mothers
Children up to age ten live at the residence with their mothers during treatment. That single policy answers the question that keeps more women out of recovery housing than any other. A mother facing a choice between treatment and losing custody of her children usually chooses her children, and the system then treats her continued use as her failing. A residence built to take both removes the choice. Very few Alabama addresses do it.
Twelve Months in a Residential Recovery Home
The program runs up to a year. Services for the women include assessment, group and individual therapy, medical screening, mental health counseling, parenting training and living skills training, with case management and transportation attached. Twelve months is enough time for a woman to finish treatment, sort out custody and benefits, get a job and hold it long enough that the job is real. Aftercare follow-up continues past discharge, and the organization runs weekly support groups for women in the maintenance stage of recovery.
On-Site Childcare and Family Services at This Sober Living Home
The children get their own program. Developmental childcare runs on site, and the residence arranges developmental and physical assessments, educational support, tutoring and psychiatric care, with vision, hearing and dental care coordinated through partner clinics. For a mother who has been unable to keep appointments for her children while using, this is often the first time in years that everyone in the family is caught up on care at once.
Jefferson County Recovery Housing for Women and Children
Birmingham is the county seat of Jefferson County and the largest city in Alabama, holding the state's deepest concentration of treatment providers, courts and social services. A woman here can reach a family court, a child welfare caseworker, a prescriber and a job inside one metropolitan area. Recovery housing in the Birmingham metro is plentiful compared with the rest of the state. Recovery housing that accepts children is not. Alabama's Department of Mental Health certifies substance use treatment providers across the state.
Children will be seen for routine sick and well child care at the Birmingham Health Care for the Homeless Pediatric Clinic (BHHPC), the Maternal Infant Network at University Hospital (MIN) Clinic, Children's Hospital, or the Jefferson County Public Health Clinic. At all of these resources they will also receive vision, hearing, and dental care.
Children needing specialized care will be referred to the appropriate community resource. Coordination of children's services will be a function of case management, the child development staff, and the nursing staff. Separate records documenting service delivery will be kept on all children. These services, including medical care, will be available for all of the women's children who are in residence with her.
