What to Expect at Destiny Haven (Part 1)
The Destiny Haven program lasts for 12 months or longer, recognising that each woman’s journey in recovery is unique. The program is customised to each woman’s needs as they advance through the program at their own pace.
It’s fully immersive, with one-on-one and group components and it teaches women how to really understand the core thinking behind the symptoms leading to unwanted behaviours like addiction.
The caring and experienced volunteer staff members live on-site and are available 24/7 to support clients. Our residents must be involved as much as possible in all decisions about their care, including assessment, developing goals for treatment, individual care planning, evaluating outcomes of care, and decisions made about broader life issues such as accommodation.
There are seven key elements to our residential program that fall underneath two broad desired outcomes for our women: emotional and psychological wellness and practical life skills. The interconnection and flow are summarised in the diagram below.
In this first blog post (of a two-part series) we’ll delve into the emotional and psychological side of our program.
One-on-one counselling
Counselling is available to all residents and it is carried out by professional counsellors who must have appropriate experience, be a member of an endorsed counselling association, and undergo the required clinical supervision themselves.
Group therapy
Group therapy sessions are held weekly by highly trained clinical services staff. Topics explored include understanding boundaries, codependency, understanding anger, psycho-educational topics, understanding addiction and the addiction cycle, understanding complex trauma and its effects on the adult person and many more.
Individual learning modules
Twice a week residents work through modules at their own pace assigned by the Clinical Services Manager, depending on their own unique backgrounds and circumstances. The learning modules are based on a similar approach to the group sessions in that an individual’s underlying issues need to be addressed for long-term recovery to take place.
Art therapy
Many women who have participated in our program will tell us that much of their healing was achieved through the weekly art therapy classes. This process is designed to help women heal from many issues in their past that they may initially struggle to articulate in traditional talking therapy. We believe the art therapy sessions to be one of the most beneficial components of our program.
Next month, we’ll cover the second part of our program: practical life skills.
