What sets the Manor of Hope apart from other substance abuse programs

From the video:

“The Manor of Hope is a long-term program. Guys stay with us a minimum of a year and sometimes longer. We actually have two boys coming up on a year at the end of January and both of them want to stay longer. Their parents want them to stay longer too,” said Steve Killelea, founder of The Manor of Hope.

“In the world today, long-term rehabilitation is not what people are doing – everybody is thirty days, sixty days and ninety days, and it doesn’t work and everybody knows it doesn’t work! The science out there will tell you it does not work, but it works if you’re looking to make a fortune. There’s a lot of people out there making a heck of a lot of money. People with substance abuse issues are not getting well.”

“I’ll give you an example, there’s one boy in our program right now who’s been with us and he’s just started his tenth month. He’s doing extraordinarily well! Before he came to The Manor of Hope he had been through forty-seven 30-day treatment programs. In the last eight years he died four times, had been homeless, had lost pretty much all contact with his family. He was at the bottom and the treatment center he was in called us and said, “We think a lot of your program and we’ve given up on this guy.” He had been through their specific program 23 times at $30,000 a month. In total he went to 47 different rehabs at $30,000 a month and insurance paid for it all. A huge cost!” The treatment center said, “He never stays anywhere for more than two days.” I told them, “Let’s give it a shot.”

Killelea continues, “So we took him in and he just started his 10th month at The Manor of Hope and he looks like a totally different individual than walked in the door. He’s happy and has a smile on his face, he’s got a great job and a career path. That’s part of what we do at The Manor, we get all the guys really quality jobs because one of the things I feel strongly about (and why we named the company Manor of Hope – Building Futures Program) is, it’s easy easy to lock somebody up for six months to a year and not teach them anything. When they leave they have no other skills than what they came in with. What is a guy going to do? He’s going to go back and do what he used to do.”

The recidivism rate in the United States is about 95 percent right now.

“A big part of what we do is, we teach the guys life skills and work skills. The first two or three months of the program the guys kind of chill. When I say chill, it’s not like sitting around the house. The guys are on a very structured schedule from 6:30 in the morning till 11 o’clock at night every day of the week. There’s no lying around.”

“Unlike most sober homes out there, we don’t let the guys go to the outside world and start working right away. They don’t get a job and have to come back by five o’clock. Why? Because if you look at the disease of addiction you know that a person is going to fail most of the time. The recidivism rate in the United States is about 95 percent right now 95%!”

“We know things aren’t working in the US. Everybody knows things are not working, and that is why we are doing it very differently at The Manor of Hope.”

“The guys are active and engaged,” says Killelea. “They have projects around the house, for instance, that we do as a group.”

“We just put in horseshoe pits over the summer, we installed public water lines into the house, we built 12 raised-bed organic gardens in the back yard. There are all kinds of really productive projects that keep they engaged and active.

“It’s amazing to see the guys, it’s funny too, because they’ll sit and they’ll bitch and complain, “I don’t want to do this… this sucks” but in the end they’re so proud of themselves. In the therapeutic community you see the guys really bond together and they make some really amazing progress.”