Steppingstone Supportive Living Treatment Program Women's Recovery House

About this Recovery House

The Steppingstone Supportive Living Treatment Program is a women's recovery residence in Rochester, New York, in Monroe County. The YWCA of Rochester and Monroe County runs it as an apartment-based program licensed by the New York State Office of Addiction Services and Supports. Individual apartment addresses are not published, and placement runs through the operator.

Twenty-Nine Furnished Apartments as Recovery Housing

The program provides twenty-nine furnished apartments for women over the age of eighteen. Furnished matters more than it sounds. A woman leaving treatment or a shelter usually owns nothing that fills a room, and the gap between qualifying for an apartment and being able to live in one is measured in beds, tables and pots. Handing over a furnished unit removes months from that timeline and lets a resident put her attention on work, treatment and her children instead of on acquiring a mattress.

A Women's Sober Living Program That Keeps Families Together

Women in the program may remain with their children ages twelve and under while in recovery. Pregnant women are given priority admission. Recovery housing that accepts school-age children is rare anywhere in New York, and it addresses the reason a large share of mothers never enter residential care. A child who stays with her mother also stays in the same school district, which is the difference between a disrupted year and a stable one.

What Supportive Living Recovery Homes Ask of Residents

Supportive living serves women whose needs do not require staffing on site around the clock. Residents run their own households and take part in individual and group counseling, receive referrals to community resources including health care and vocational training, and join social activities designed to build supportive relationships and break isolation. Women enter from other treatment or come looking for long-term supportive housing, and the length of a stay is set by the plan a resident is working on.

Rochester, Monroe County and Finger Lakes Recovery Residences

Rochester is the seat of Monroe County and the anchor of the Finger Lakes region, the third largest city in New York State. Everything a resident needs is inside the city: the county courts and social services, Rochester Regional Health and the University of Rochester Medical Center, Monroe Community College, and a bus network centered on the downtown transit hub. Apartments spread across the city keep residents inside that network while living in ordinary buildings, on ordinary streets, without a sign on the door announcing what the building is.

Getting Into This Monroe County Recovery Residence

Applications go to the YWCA of Rochester and Monroe County, which holds the apartment locations and makes the placement. The questions worth asking: what the program requires of a resident's week, what happens if a woman loses a job, how children's schooling and childcare are supported, whether medication for opioid use disorder is continued, how long women typically stay, and what the transition to a lease of her own looks like at the end. A licensed program keeps written answers to all of it.