Safe Harbor

About Healthy Acadia

Healthy Acadia is the nonprofit behind Safe Harbor Recovery Residence for Women and Children in Machias, Maine, the only certified recovery residence in Washington County. It is a 501(c)(3) organization serving communities in Maine's Hancock and Washington counties and beyond, with offices in Ellsworth, Machias and Calais.

About Healthy Acadia

Healthy Acadia is a broad public health organization rather than a housing provider alone. Its work spans eight focus areas, including Strong Beginnings, Healthy Aging, Healthy Food for All, Substance Prevention and Recovery, Basic Needs and Health Equity, under a stated mission to empower people and organizations to build healthy communities. Recovery housing sits inside the substance prevention and recovery side of that work.

Recovery Housing in Washington County

Safe Harbor is the organization's only recovery residence. It serves women aged 18 and older, with or without children generally aged 10 or younger, who are committed to their recovery and personal growth, and it draws women from across the region rather than from Machias alone. Healthy Acadia is also part of the Washington County Substance Use Response Collaborative.

The Partnership Behind Safe Harbor

Safe Harbor is run as a collaboration. Healthy Acadia handles day-to-day operations, Downeast Community Partners owns and maintains the building, and Aroostook Mental Health Center and the Community Caring Collaborative provide clinical and programmatic support. The residence is supported in part by MaineHousing.

What Certification Commits a Recovery Housing Operator To

Certification through the Maine Association of Recovery Residences is granted residence by residence, so the residence holds the standing and the operator behind it has to keep meeting the terms. For an agency of this size, that puts the recovery housing side of the work under an external standard the other service lines do not answer to: fees and rules disclosed in writing, a code of ethics governing how residents are treated, and a route for a complaint that does not end inside the household. Referring workers across Hancock and Washington counties use that standing when they decide where to place someone, which is part of why one certified house serves a catchment far larger than a single town.

Questions for a Downeast Recovery Housing Provider

Placement runs through the agency, and the useful questions at that level differ from the ones about daily life in a house. How long has the agency run recovery housing in Washington County? Who answers when the problem is the building itself, given that a partner organization owns and maintains it? How are fees documented, and what happens to a resident's place if her income or custody situation changes? How is the waitlist handled when the house is full, and is there anywhere else in the region the agency can point to? A complaint that cannot be settled inside the house escalates to the agency, and past the agency to the certifying body.