Goodbye

Irene Perez has sadly resigned as a Detox Counselor. Her last day will be on December 18, 2006. Irene has worked at Detox for about a year and a half and has been such a wonderful addition to the team. Her hard work and dedication to the job and clients will be greatly missed. Details for a going away party will be posted in the near future.
Best wishes Irene!

Welcome!

Dawn Farm Detox would like to welcome its newest Detox Counselors; Nate Clevenger and Corey Telin. Their experiences, backgrounds, and positive attitudes will add to the hopeful and compassionate environment at Detox. Welcome to the team!

Welcome

I'd like belatedly announce that Andrew Kraemer is our new Project Manager. Most of you know that Andrew worked at detox until this past summer. He is responsible for health and safety, CARF/contract compliance, incident reporting process, volunteer events, and he'll be helping Jason and Ryan Dawson with tech issues.

Jo Horn started working for the Farm on Wednesday, November 15th. She'll be with us part time and will be helping Jim with fund raising.

Welcome Andrew and Jo!

Volunteer of the Month

Congratulation Bill!

Bill Zambon our Transitional Housing Manager of Normal Street, has shown much dedication to his position. Bill is acting as House Manger for the Chapin Street house as well as holding down the fort at Normal. Despite the challenge; he still maintains a level head and displays his usual mild manner temperament during this time of change.

Way to go Bill!

Email and Start Pages

Two quick updates:

1. You can create a personalized Dawn Farm start page by going to http://start.dawnfarm.org. It will have your email, some bookmarks, your calendar (if you use it), our blog, the staff newsletter and you are able to customize the rest.
   
2. You can continue to access your email just as you have but you may also find it by going to http://email.dawnfarm.org. It's a little easier to remember.

Staff In-Service

There is a Dawn Farm Staff In-Service scheduled for this Thursday, November 16, 2006 from 8:30am to 4:00pm. It will be held in the new barn at Dawn Farm. The morning presentation will be on "Tools for Balance" presented by Louis Thayer, E.D., a retired professor from Eastern Michigan University and Steve Harrigan, a Tai Chi Instructor. Staff will be taught relaxation techniques and moving meditation. The afternoon portion is TBA. All staff are encouraged to attend and will be paid. Breakfast, lunch, and snacks will be provided. See you there.

Resource for the month

SMART Recovery has a Tool Chest and Homework page on their website.

While SMART Recovery differs significantly from our approach (Primarily their assertion that addiction is not a disease, but a result of cognitive distortions.), they are based on Rational Emotive Therapy, which we use often in our programs.

2006 Holiday Party

The annual holiday party will be held on 12/15/06 at the Farm. All staff, alumni, families and clients are welcome and encouraged to come. More information will be posted as the date approaches.

Employee of the Month

Veronica Smith, Daybreak Therapist, is the employee of the month. Veronica brings a wealth of Social Work experience to the Daybreak Program. She often goes above what is expected of her, her initiative to step up to get the job done (and have fun) goes without saying. Her co-workers especially appreciate the "monthly group schedule" Veronica developed. Thanks for being on the Daybreak Team, Veronica. Congratulations!

Article for the month

A new Bill White article on alcohol, tobacco and other drug use by addictions professionals. It covers a lot of ground and is well worth the time it takes to read. Here's a provocative line about tobacco:

Moving forward to address nicotine addiction within the larger rubric of addiction treatment is no longer a question of inadequate research; it is a question of honesty, courage and leadership.

Detox Site Visit

Recently, in the process of auditing the Washtenaw Community Health Organization (WCHO), the state conducted a site visit at Detox. They reviewed casefiles and interviewed some of us for a few hours. The feedback we got from the WCHO was that the auditors were extremely impressed and heaped enormous praise for the services, staff and documentation. WE DO GREAT WORK!

Email Migration

We will be migrating our email to another service this weekend.

The new service will hosted by Google and will provide much better spam filtering, faster webmail, lots of storage, and way more features.

The new sign in page for webmail will be: http://mail.google.com/a/dawnfarm.org. There is already a link on the Employee Home Page.

For those of you who read your email using Outlook, Outlook Express or Thunderbird - check your email before you leave on Friday and leave this program open when you leave. We will need to change some settings on your computer after the migration. Instructions are here, but Ryan Dawson, Andrew Kraemer and I will be happy to help you with this.

For those of you who use webmail - your address book and any messages left on the server will be lost. I'd encourage you to export your address book and print important messages.

I will email everyone a CSV file with all of our addresses. This can be imported into your contacts. Again, Ryan Dawson, Andrew Kraemer and I will be happy to help you with this.

If you have questions or need help, please contact me, Andrew Kraemer, or Ryan Dawson.

Staffing News

Rick Wierich is now responsible for maintenance at all of our facilities. Congrats Rick!

Andrew Kraemer is our new Project Manager and will be responsible for health and safety, CARF accreditation, donations, volunteer groups, etc. Welcome back Andrew!