Women’s Outreach marks 20th year
The center’s successful strategies are models in the state, thanks to graduates and early employees.
In its 20 years of existence, Highland Rivers’ Women Outreach Center has left its mark around Georgia, with former employees and graduates spreading its successful strategies as they advance in their careers.
“It just kept growing,” said Lynn Bishop, the Highland Rivers counselor who started the center in 1998 when the agency received a one-year state grant to serve a handful of women outpatients at a time.
Bishop was called away in 2010 by Superior Court Chief Judge Brenda Weaver, to run the accountability court treatment programs in the Appalachian Judicial Circuit covering Gilmer, Fannin and Pickens counties.
By that time the Women’s Outreach Center had evolved a roster of successful substance abuse treatment strategies tailored especially to women with children at risk of becoming wards of the state. And with that came firm backing for its expanded residential initiative.
“We were a highly respected program, and when money was available we got it,” Bishop said. “When you have good outcomes, you get funded.”
Aside from statistics and evidence-based research showing the program works, Bishop points to some “star students” who are now leading the way for others.
Wrayanne Parker, a Polk County native who struggled with drug and alcohol addictions, is now the women’s program coordinator for the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Development Services.
“If you can hang on during the ride, Lynn is a great mentor. But you have to want it,” said Ansley Silvers, who followed Bishop as director of the center and now serves as Highland Rivers’ manager of addictive disease and residential services.
Parker did, and now oversees programs in every region of the state.
Cassandra Price, a Rome native who came on early as a counselor, is head of the state DBHDS division of addictive diseases. Bishop laughs as she looks back on the day Price arrived for her interview.
“We saw her pull in and all of a sudden, flip, out comes a wheelchair,” Bishop said. “But she never needed help. She wouldn’t take it. Cassandra was spunky and set an example of doing for yourself.”
The Women’s Outreach Center started in an empty house on the Northwest Georgia Regional Hospital campus. The exciting aspect, Bishop said, was being able to stick with the clients for six months or longer instead of the previous 28-day limit.
“It was so frustrating, because you’d just have them for a minute,” she said about the old model. “Twenty-eight days is no time in the life of an addict. We all loved this program from the beginning. To work with them and see them grow — it was just great.”
Today, it has 38 beds in the residential treatment section and a vibrant outpatient program in the facility at 6 Mathis Drive.
But the new director, Wendie Storey, said the need continues to grow. Most of Bishop’s early clients were alcoholics, but drug addiction gradually took over lives.
“And it’s getting worse,” Storey said. “When I was doing intake in 2012, it was common for them to have a drug of choice. Now they say, ‘Whatever I can get my hands on.’”