Life Skills and Activities Group for Recovering Clients
Our treatment center with its 25 years of experience has identified the need for our clients to re-integrate themselves back into daily life and habits. We have actually found it therapeutic and helpful to organize activities that get our clients back in the swing of participating in daily activities that will strengthen their sobriety.
Our Life Skills and Activities groups are experiential and are designed to address the needs of the clients. These actvities educate them in necessary life skills covering a wide variety of activities from managing their money to figuring out how to eat something that will nourish them. One of the more popular activities is when the clients participate in creating family style” meals on the weekends.
More Information about The Life Skills and Activities Groups
There is a Life Skills group on Thursday afternoons and then a corresponding
group on the weekends. For instance, the Thursday group facilitator might have a lead a discussion about the fact
that the local fast food taco place is tasty and it seems like quite a deal to get a combo meal
until they begin to examine the nutritional value of that value pack and evaluate
how quickly they get hungry after the “meal deal." Then, the clients are shown how
much food they could make if they went shopping for the ingredients, not to mention
how much better it would taste if they put their creative touch to the meal. 
Then, on Saturday afternoon, the clients and staff go grocery shopping together. Staff members share their knowledge of shopping frugally by looking at unit costs and the specials of the week. On Saturday evening, everyone cooks together and basic culinary concepts are covered (likehow to double the recipe, and how to set the table). After the meal is prepared, staff and clients sit together and share together. No cell phones or laptops are allowed. Some clients have said it has been years since they actually sat at a dinner table, having conversation. Recovery is tied into all of this, just as emotions are tied to the experience.
On Sunday, they go to the computer lab, and begin to personalize their own budgeting plan, using Mint.com, which is a free resource that “flags” the fact that they spend a lot eating out, and calls attention to spending habits.
As the clients mature through the phase system, the Life Skills course will also mature. The goal is to have clients who are launching into independent living will have a place where they can learn how to ‘shop’ for an apartment, do credit recovery, and launch into sober living on their own in a way that is "healthy" - in all senses of the word.
