Life Skills

At the Discipleship House we are adamant about the men getting jobs and learning to support themselves.  In the traditions of the twelve step program it talks about being fully self supported declining outside contributions. We apply this to our lives also.  But the work doesn't stop there.  After a while after they have had the job and are all caught up with there financial obligations we sit down with the men and talk about their personal goals for 3 months and six months and a year from now. This is effective for them to start making a plan to get a car or their own apartment.

As the men live with the roommates at the DH they learn how to keep their areas clean and how important that is for their own organizational skills.  We as a staff are constantly on top of them to keep their areas clean and beds made because we know something as simple as that will help them down the road on their own walks of life.

Finally in this short summery we need to talk about life skills in recovery. As the men are going through the the house in the different stages set up for them we start out with the basics of doing the 12 steps with a sponsor and usually one of the guys at the house who has gone through the steps will guide them through the steps and this is important not only for the man just starting the steps but equally important for the man to guide the other one through the steps. For the guy who has gone through the steps is usually at the end of his stay at the DH. He is then required to branch out and find a sponsor that is not affiliated with the DH and to rework his steps with an outside sponsor and to find his own set of meetings he'd like to attend. We require that he got to at least 3 meetings a week of his choice. We let the men know this is the point where the rubber hits the road, meaning that they need to branch out and take advantage of the outside meetings and build their support network outside of the house.