Brunswick Church of the Nazarene in Ohio is teaming up with Cathy’s House and Hope Recovery Community to help provide addiction recovery services for its community. The following story is adapted from an article written by Sara Crawford for The Medina Gazette.

After an event on Overdose Awareness Day was hosted at the Brunswick Church of Nazarene at the end of August executive director of Cathy’s House, Jon Robinson, began talking with the pastor and found out that the church owns multiple properties, with one of the houses vacant. 

Now, Cathy’s House is working to renovate the property to provide five beds in Brunswick. 

“Medina County ADAMH board has just been so generous to us and provided us additional funding to get us started and help cover our operational costs,” Robinson said. “(They) just recently supplied us with funds to increase our staffing because it's far more than a bunch of guys living in a house.” 

According to Robinson, construction on the house is in full force, and the plan is to be done in March. 

Robinson said that there are men at the main house who are interested in moving to the Brunswick house once it opens. With this being the first place in Brunswick, Robinson is unsure of what to expect but is excited to see the opportunities for the men involved in Cathy’s House. 

Cathy’s House has an 80 percent successful discharge rate of the men leaving on their own. The program does not have a set limit for how long people can stay and allows them to set their own plans. 

“We want that house to have support and structure and opportunity to go to meetings and have other people in the community surround them and build them up,” Robinson said. 

As Cathy’s House works on its expansion in Brunswick, Robinson's wife, Stefanie Robinson, executive director of Hope Recovery Community, is also working to expand their services out to the area. 

Hope Recovery Community is working to open a satellite office at the Brunswick Church of Nazarene with the goal of starting services in the spring. 

“(Just) making more options for people in recovery, making recovery more accessible to people because transportation can really be a barrier,” Stefanie Robinson said. 

Stefanie Robinson, the Hope Recovery team and the ADAMH Board are still in conversation with the Brunswick Church of Nazarene about what the exact details are regarding the satellite space. 

According to Stefanie Robinson, they know that there are challenges for people to reach recovery assistance, and the hope is that the satellite office will help solve that. 

“A lot of recovery activity kind of tends to land in Medina, and so there’s not as much going on in the other areas of the county,” Stefanie Robinson said. 

To read the full story published in The Medina Gazette, click here.