Offering quality, accessible services on reduced budget

Friday, Oct. 30, 2009

At Walden, we take pride in our identity as a community-based agency. For us, this means that we tailor our programming around the behavioral health needs of individuals and families in St. Mary's County.

With more than one-third of our clients living in the Lexington Park area, we have recently made the decision to expand the services we have available there. A new site on FDR Boulevard will open on Nov. 2 that has a large enough space to accommodate all that we want to offer in Lexington Park. This new site will replace our site on Three Notch Road.

We have given the new Lexington Park site the name "Hope Place" and our mission there is simple: To meet the community of Lexington Park in need of behavioral health support where they are, and to offer partnership to them in addressing needs related to crisis, counseling and addiction services. We are inviting social service agency partners, clients and volunteers in the community to join us at Hope Place and to help us build community support mechanisms that extend beyond treatment and into a lifetime in recovery

We hope to work with local partners to build Hope Place into a location where multiple needs might be addressed that impact persons recovering from addiction or trauma, to include counseling, employment, health care, referral support and a range of life skills and wellness classes.

At the same time, state and local budget cuts have been passed on to Walden at a time when economic pressures have created a rising need for behavioral health services.

In response to this reality, we are doing everything we can to be as efficient as possible with the dollars we have so that the rising need for our services can be met. In November, we will begin offering services at three sites instead of four. Service sites available will be Anchor in Charlotte Hall, our original site in California and Hope Place in Lexington Park. The Leonardtown office will remain open in the short-term as an administrative site, but no services will be offered there.

Eventually, all Walden staff will be located in one of the three open sites. The consolidation of space, furloughs for staff, and other cost-cutting measures are all part of Walden's agency-wide effort to continue to offer the highest quality, most accessible services possible on a reduced budget.

We have always been keenly aware that we cannot provide "help for today; hope for tomorrow" without the community's help. We rely on the understanding of community members who provide friendship, family support or a second chance to those in recovery; we count on the partnership of our collaborators and we are tremendously grateful to our donors and volunteers. In the coming days, we will be reaching out to the community with continued energy and purpose.

We hope that you will contact us for ways to join us in seeking a healthier, safer community and we welcome your involvement as supporters or participants in our programs.

Kathleen O'Brien, Leonardtown

The writer is executive director of Walden Sierra.