Step Sisters

About Step Sisters

Step Sisters is a sober living operator in Calera, Alabama, providing women's recovery housing in Shelby County at the southern edge of the Birmingham metro.

A Women's Sober Living Operator in Shelby County

This is a small independent provider working a market the larger organizations have mostly skipped. Shelby County is suburban and affluent, and its recovery housing supply is thin against its population, with the women's share thinner still. Most of Alabama's certified women's beds sit in Birmingham, Huntsville, Mobile and the northeast cities. An operator placing women in Calera is serving people who would otherwise have to leave the county to find a bed.

Alabama Sober Homes and the Voluntary Certification Standard

Alabama requires no license and no certification for a housing-only recovery residence. The Alabama Department of Mental Health certifies treatment providers and keeps no register of residences, so the only external standard is voluntary certification through the Alabama Alliance for Recovery Residences, the state affiliate of the National Alliance for Recovery Residences. Thirty-nine residences hold it. Certification is granted to an address, never to a company, and what it guarantees is documentation: fees and rules in writing before move-in, a written relapse and discharge policy, a code of ethics and somewhere to complain outside the house. Those same documents can be requested from any provider.

Where This Recovery Housing Provider Places Women

Calera sits on Interstate 65 where Shelby County turns rural, with Alabaster and Pelham to the north and Columbiana, the county seat, to the east. Work is concentrated along the Highway 31 and Highway 25 corridors and up the interstate, and Shelby Baptist Medical Center anchors the largest employment cluster in the county. Birmingham is close enough for outpatient appointments and specialist care, far enough that a resident is not living inside the environment she left.

Choosing a Women's Recovery Housing Provider in the Birmingham Metro

With a small operator, the questions are practical. How many women are in the household. Is there a house manager living on site. What is the weekly rate, what does it include, and what is charged separately. Is there a curfew, and how are meeting requirements verified. What happens after a relapse, and is that policy written down. How are children and visitation handled. A provider that answers each of those the same way in conversation and on paper has told you what you need.