Danielle Ratcliff, the CEO of REACH for Tomorrow served as the guest speaker at the Highland County Drug Abuse Prevention Coalition meeting Wednesday.
Ratcliff explained the services the nonprofit agency provides to help people cope with substance abuse and mental health issues.
REACH (Restoring – Educating – Advocating – Collaborating = Hope) for Tomorrow serves people in Highland and surrounding counties and has offices in Greenfield and Ross County. The agency will be opening an office in Xenia in the near future.
Ratcliff said the agency’s clients are split about evenly between substance abuse programs and other mental health counseling. It is funded through insurance, self-pay, and, in some cases, sponsors.
“We do supportive housing for the intensive outpatient,” said Ratcliff. She said it’s preferable that clients with substance abuse problems have been clean for 90 days, but the program will work with people individually.
“They don’t have to have gone through a treatment program, but we love to be able to do that partnership where they’ve been in a program, and then, rather than just go straight out into the community and try to build those relationships with their families again, we want to wrap those services around them and give them a place to stay at the same time,” she said.
Ratcliff said it can be difficult for clients to find housing and hold a job while going to intensive outpatient treatment four to five times a week. “It’s really hard to do that with all the stresses of your job, home and family,” she said.
She said the agency is planning to provide an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) for adolescents in Highland County. “I think that is something that is really being missed,” she said. “As we know, children don’t wait until they are 18 to start using drugs.”
REACH for Tomorrow is certified to provide services for mental health and addiction through the state of Ohio through 2025. It has been active for six years and has been providing mental health counseling for four years. “We do that in the home, in our office, we meet in churches, and in the community,” said Ratcliff. “As we know, living in Appalachia or rural Ohio, transport is one of the biggest barriers.”
She said that although REACH for Tomorrow is a faith-based organization, clients and staff are not required to be Christians. “It doesn’t mean that you have to be a Christian and you are going to have God jammed down your throat,” she said. “It just means that we want to make sure that how we exhibit ourselves as people is in a way that when you meet us you’ll know we work for REACH because of how we treat other people.”
For nearly a year, the agency has partnered with an equine therapist near Washington C.H. to help people with issues such as PTSD and anxiety, and the service is often covered by insurance. “We’ve found that our clients, especially our IOP clients, love equine therapy,” said Ratcliff.
REACH for Tomorrow also provided training to mental health clinicians that awards continuing education credits. The agency will be offering trainings in June and July in Chillicothe.
Those interested in counseling or training can call 877-99REACH.
Reach John Hackley at 937-402-2571.
