YWCA Helena Women's Sober House

About this Sober House

YWCA Helena is a certified recovery residence for women and children in Helena, Montana, the seat of Lewis and Clark County in west-central Montana. The organization runs its WINGS program, Women Initiating New Growth and Stability, as substance-free transitional housing paired with outpatient treatment for women moving out of addiction and homelessness.

A Women's Recovery Home Inside a Larger Shelter Program

YWCA Helena houses women and their children together instead of separating a mother from her kids during treatment, a structure that matters for women whose recovery and custody are tied together. The organization runs two twelve-room programs on North Park Avenue: one for women and children experiencing homelessness generally, and WINGS, the program built specifically around recovery from substance use and co-occurring mental health conditions.

What WINGS Certification and Licensing Establish

YWCA Helena is licensed by the state as both a Substance Use Disorder Treatment Program and a Mental Health Center, and it holds certification as a recovery residence on top of that clinical licensing. Montana's affiliate of the National Alliance for Recovery Residences is Recovery Access Montana. Together, the clinical license and the recovery residence certification give WINGS a level of outside oversight that a purely peer-run sober house does not carry.

An Eighteen to Twenty-Four Month Recovery Program

WINGS runs on a considerably longer timeline than most sober living: eighteen to twenty-four months, built around the reality that addiction, trauma and homelessness rarely resolve on a thirty or ninety day schedule. Participants get individual mental health therapy, addictions counseling and group work addressing the trauma, including violence and abuse, that frequently underlies both the substance use and the housing instability that brought them to the program.

Recovery Housing in Helena and Lewis and Clark County

Helena is both the state capital and the seat of Lewis and Clark County, which means residents at YWCA Helena live within reach of state agencies, the district courthouse and a full outpatient treatment network without leaving the city. For women arriving from smaller Montana towns with far less service infrastructure, that concentration of resources is often the deciding factor in choosing Helena over a program closer to home.