Friends of the Haven

Our Mission is to provide financial and volunteer support to further the activities of The Haven and Baby Haven, whose charter is to provide a safe, empowering, and enriching environment for women and their infants and small children. The Haven's and Baby Haven's goal is to be a place where women can recover from addictions and co-occurring mental illness; deliver healthy, drug-free infants (if pregnant); improve parenting skills and receive quality early educational services for their children; maintain and build upon cultural and family connections as sources of social support; and become self-sufficient, confident, and productive members of our community.

Friends of the Haven will provide The Haven, and Baby Haven, with resources for projects designed to further the abilities of women from across Colorado who are in treatment at The Haven, as they work to break the cycle of drug and alcohol dependence. Doing so will allow these women to go on to provide and maintain long-term, safe, stable, and drug-free environments for themselves and their children. Friends of the Haven will work cooperatively with the community to provide funding and volunteers for any and all activities supporting these outcomes. Such activities might range from support for operational needs that do not have other sources of support to providing support for psychological, developmental, educational, and/or vocational services, to offering scholarships to women in need. Upon occasion and when appropriate, Friends of the Haven will also consider funding for research that could lead to the enhancement of programmatic or behavioral outcomes. Finally, the Board of Friends of the Haven recognizes the importance of capital needs; they have and will seek to identify those needs, with a goal to plan for the long-term success of The Haven.

The Haven is a Modified Therapeutic Community (MTC) which provides substance abuse treatment for women, mothers and their infants. Licensed by the Division of Behavioral Health, the program offers intensive residential treatment for clients with addictions. Clients are referred from the criminal justice system, child welfare agencies, relatives, and self-referrals.Founded in 1992, The Haven was the first program in Colorado to accept infants into residence while their mothers received substance abuse treatment – keeping children out of the foster care system. Haven clients typically stay nine to 12 months in residential treatment, followed by an additional 12 months of outpatient MTC treatment services. Long-term outcomes are very positive. In fact, 90.1 percent of clients who enter The Haven remain drug-, alcohol-, and crime-free two years after completion.

The Haven Mothers' Houses I and II provide intensive residential substance abuse treatment to women. Women who receive services through The Mother’s House must either be pregnant or have an infant in their care. The Mother’s House provides a stable, safe, and drug-free environment to allow women to overcome the behaviors that led them to a lifestyle of addiction and crime. Clients are given an opportunity to learn different ways to cope with their feelings and are taught how to make appropriate choices. Many women do not seek treatment due to the fact that they are fearful of what will happen to their children. The Mother’s House operates with the philosophy that it is critical that a mother be with her infant as she progresses through treatment. The Haven children are the heart of the program and allow the mother to experience love, care and parenting in a substance-free environment.

The Baby Haven provides licensed child care services to children from 2 weeks through 5 years. This state of the art facility and programming was designed to meet the needs of substance exposed infants. Other services that support infants and families include access to the infant mental health team, family partnership and engagement activities, attention to social and emotional development, music and movemetn, on-site physical therapist, infant massage, healthy meal options and much more. All women at The Haven have the opportunity to enroll thier child in this program. Infants recieve high quality educational supports through the implementation of both Teaching Strategies Gold and the Creative Curriculum, and all teachers are Certified Early Childhood Teachers. Low ratios between student and teacher allow for enhanced learning opportunities. Space is also available for community families, whether they are private pay or use CCAP funds.