By Daily Press staff
Local groups are working toward improving community self-help and recovery resources.
Ruth Hollman, executive director of the self-help and recovery exchange (SHARE), the support group clearinghouse for Los Angeles County, was the keynote speaker at the LA County Sober Living Coalition’s (LACSLC’s) monthly meeting at the Westside Pavilion on Jan. 5.
Hollman was invited to talk on the county’s need to develop and operate a wide variety of community self-help and recovery resources, including more self-help support group centers, community drop-in centers and sober living homes.
“Sober living homes are extremely important,” said Hollman, who also is president of the national network of mutual help centers. “Because they provide a safe and healthy place for recovering people to associate and to live with other sober people.”
Three representatives from the LA County Department of Mental Health, which funds SHARE, were on hand to answer questions and to provide information and support for community self-help and recovery resource development.
“The department of mental health and the sober living network (SLN) will identify and quality-assure the safe, healthy, and ethically managed sober living homes,” said Ken Schonlau, volunteer project director of SLN, which is located in Santa Monica and provides information, training, technical support, and advocacy for more than 300 sober living homes in the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino.
In March 2005, Los Angeles County contracted with SHARE to expand its program because of the success the Mar Vista center has had in turning people’s lives
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 12, 2006. Read the original PDF.