Increasing the Number of Mutual Help Recovery Homes for Substance Abusers: Effects of Government Policy and Funding Assistance

Abstract

As a form of aftercare, Oxford House (OH) is a recovery home that is democratically operated by residents, with no designated limit on length of stay. These homes are behaviorally based settings that provide clear consequences for any substance use or disruptive behavior. What is unique about these settings is that training, supervision, and implementation of the contingencies are provided by the residents. In order to increase the number of these mutual-help recovery homes, two groups of states utilized state funds to hire recruiters and set up a loan fund to establish new OHs. Using a multiple baseline design, findings indicated that this intervention involving the hiring of recruiters and a loan program was effective in facilitating increases in the number of U.S. OHs in each group of states. An immediate increase in the opening of new houses occurred when the intervention was introduced, resulting in the opening of 559 new OHs across these states.