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HomeHealthCultural outreach and education a benefit of ON Counseling services

Cultural outreach and education a benefit of ON Counseling services

The Osage Nation Counseling Center will officially open later this year

The Osage Nation Counseling Center will officially open later this year to provide state-of-the-art treatment to Native Americans struggling with substance abuse.

The facility is finished, but due to various requirements for the adolescent facility and others, the center has not yet opened. However, when it does open, substance abuse treatment and outpatient counseling services will be provided.

In the meantime, clients can still be seen and put on a waitlist for treatment.

“If there’s clients or patients wanting to get into our program and are not wanting to be referred out to a different facility, we are calling and scheduling some of our clients on the waitlist that can be seen outpatient up here until we do open the new facility,” said Lyric Brooks, Primary Residential Treatment Program Manager.

The facility has five buildings, or homes, for residents; adolescents, women, men, and a transitional living facility to help clients integrate back into society after treatment. There is also a building for traditional counseling. Both the men’s and women’s facilities can hold 12 residents, and the transitional living can hold six men and six women. The adolescent building can hold eight boys and eight girls.

Laura Brooks, the ON Counseling Center Program Manager, said the outpatient center will serve clients who need counseling, as well as other services.

“In the outpatient counseling center, we have eight clinicians which are LCSWs and LCPs,” Laura Brooks said. “In PRT they have a LADC (Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor), several clinicians that have different specialties. The outpatient counseling center has a contract with the state and Osage County for drug court and offender screenings, so we do also provide those services, as well as grief counseling, trauma and individual therapy, group therapy and family therapy.”

Strengthening the Spirit

For the primary residential treatment for substance abuse, clients will have therapy and also go through the treatment curriculum. Curriculums during treatment include Strengthening the Spirits and Taking Flight. The curriculum will take clients through different aspects of Native American history and culture.

“Both of these are Native American-based curriculum,” Brooks said. “It goes through some of the history as well as some of the statistics of substance abuse within the Native American culture and how it progressed over time.”

Within the 12 steps of recovery, there will be other portions of the program that are both culturally and non-culturally based, including counselor processing groups, criminal and addiction thinking and managing emotions.

The primary residential treatment program will last 90 days, and clients can stay in transitional living for the same amount of time if it’s necessary for the resident. A resident can stay for up to seven months in total.

“PRT is a 90-day program,” Brooks said. “Before the end of the client’s 90 days, we’ve got a case manager on site for both men and women to track where the client is at and to see any possible needs and what is their continued plan when they graduate from our facility. Some might be ready to integrate back into society, some do need a little extra help, so that’s where our transitional living would come into play. You would get 90 days PRT and 90 days in transitional with a 30-day extension.”

Clients will also need to go through meetings and other group sessions while in the facility.

“Every evening clients go to an NA or AA meeting,” Brooks said. “We do organize movie nights, maybe all go out as a group, go see a movie. We do offer going out to do group bowling, maybe once a month or a couple of times a month. Sometimes doing outings to the Gathering Place, just to remain comfortable out in the public and in society around people, not just staying cooped up in our buildings. It’s very important that we do get them out and involved in the community.”

Sweat Lodge and cultural activities

Wednesday night sweats will be offered, and that amenity makes the Osage Nation’s counseling center stand out from other facilities.

“Sweats are a main staple for a decision to come to our Native facility,” Laura Brooks said. “Our sweat ceremony brings people to us. That aspect alone.”

Cultural activities and crafting create an outlet for clients and can appeal to those looking for a treatment facility.

“Sweat, as well as our cultural crafting, beading and moccasin making, I think that’s what can set us aside from perhaps other treatment facilities,” Lyric Brooks said.

Kirk Shaw, Clinic Administrator for the Wahzhazhe Health Center, said the cultural aspect helps clients regardless if the client is Osage or not.

“One of the most important aspects of it is being culturally involved,” he said. “Even though it may not be their culture they’re still involved in, it’s some culture. Something they can grasp onto. As they are going through this process and their 90 days, they are able to look at it and see the culture they’ve been shown. The majority of it is Osage culture. To me, they are yearning for that back home. Once they graduate, they see our culture and it’s still thriving, and this is what they can be and what they can do, and they want to go back home and do the same thing, or maybe stay in our culture.”

Skills development and job training

The counseling center also wants to give clients the opportunity to obtain skills needed for after they leave the facility, and this includes a food handler’s license.

“The one thing about cooking is that you do have to have your food handler’s license if you’re cooking for everyone,” Laura Brooks said. “That’s something we’re going to try to do for the clients because when it comes time to get jobs, they’ve already got that on their resume that they do have their food handlers license.”

Outpatient services will have office hours from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. PRT will have someone at the facility at all times.

“During the day in PRT, they will have the program manager,” Laura Brooks said. “Each PRT will have a counselor, so the men will have their own counselor and the women will have their own counselor. They will each have their own case manager, and then a PRSS and a monitor. Evening shift will have three staff members and overnight will have two.”

The PRT manager and the case managers, who are also nurses, will be on call in case anything happens or questions need to be answered.

Substance Abuse Treatment

The inpatient facilities are set up for substance abuse treatment, but substance abuse can often lead to other mental health issues.

“Currently to be in our program, it is to prevent substance abuse as your main issue,” Brooks said. “Anyone with substance abuse can lead to depression, anxiety or racing thoughts, but currently for our program it is for substance abuse.”

Anyone who is a tribal member can apply for substance abuse treatment, as long as they are a tribal card holder. Clients can be from any state or tribe as long as they hold membership within a Native American tribe.

The facility was built using money the tribe received from the American Rescue Plan Act during the pandemic. Because the pandemic caused everything to shut down and people to stay in their homes, it caused mental health issues and substance abuse to rise across the country.

“All across the country when COVID happened, you saw an uptick in behavioral health and mental health issues,” Shaw said. “As that funneled down because we received ARPA funds and CARES Act funds from Indian Health Services, which comes from Health and Human Services from the federal government, so you saw a big push from that level.”

The previous counseling centers were in several different locations, with the men’s facility in Barnsdall and the women’s facility in Pawhuska. Many people involved with the health system and the Osage Nation government felt like it was time for things to change.

“Congresswoman [Jodie] Revard is a big advocate for PRT,” Shaw said “She was one of the main ones that said ‘We need to give our clients something that’s nice and special that they can be proud of’ rather than sell them this dream that they’re able to address their mental health and substance abuse, and then they come here and go through the old men’s PRT in Barnsdall. It just is not conducive to the environment we wanted to provide. That’s why it was a big push to get this, not just for our Osage tribal members, but any tribal member that needed these much-needed services.”

Sobriety

The ONCC team hopes that with the new counseling center, the goal of sobriety can be achieved.

“I think our main goal we’re wanting to get out of this, is we want to set our people up for the best that we can to get them on the right path of sobriety,” Brooks said. “But not only getting them on that path of sobriety but continuing that path so they can implement back into society in that sense of community and set them up for success with the skills to not have to go through relapse.”

“In 2020, when I was elected to Congress, it was COVID year,” Revard said. “In that, the Nation had to react to a lot of issues quickly, and one of them of course was the PRT shutting down.”

Revard said with everything being shut down, trying to figure out where clients were going to go and receive services to function during the pandemic was difficult, especially with behavioral health issues on the rise.

“There was a lot of anxiety going on with COVID,” she said. “Behavioral health issues started increasing, so we were getting booked at the clinic. People were requesting TeleHealth. So in that, we started talking about what our needs were, and what we could do in all the areas, especially behavioral health.”

For a while, there was just a men’s PRT clinic, and the women’s PRT clinic was eventually built. Now, the Osage Nation has a transitional treatment and adolescent facility.

“What you were seeing were costs not being shared,” she said. “The more money we put into operations, takes away from the actual client or the direct service that you’re providing. We needed something to be all-encompassing of resources.”

A long road to success

Former Congresswoman Angela Pratt was also a strong supporter for the counseling center. On the day of the ribbon-cutting celebration, she wrote a heartfelt statement about how proud and grateful she was that her and Congresswoman Revard’s work paid off.

“Monday was a beautiful day for the Osage Nation,” Pratt wrote. “One of my biggest dreams come true. The ribbon cutting for a new campus for Counseling and Primary Residential Treatment Facility. I have been a longtime advocate for counseling and treatment for our people. It hits my immediate family and I have been pushing for this for many years.”

The women’s clinic was originally on Main Street in Pawhuska. Pratt and Revard worked to make sure the clinic was in a safer, more private area so that clients could feel more comfortable about seeking treatment.

“Things got heated at times but she and I feel very strongly about getting our people the help they desperately need,” Pratt said. “Also knowing it’s hard enough to get people in the doors for services and most do not care to be put on front street, or literally Main Street for services.”

Research was done on what the facility should provide to clients, as one weekend Pratt, Revard and Congresswoman Paula Stabler drove all over the state to see what different facilities offered to clients.

“One day Congresswoman Stabler, Congresswoman Revard and I drove around 500 miles in a day to look at different tribal and non-tribal-owned Residential Treatment facilities and asked questions on how they operate,” she said. “One was sitting on a lot of land and incorporated an Equine Program. That’s where we instantly knew we wanted a large lot of land to be able to provide different areas for gardening, a nice place for them to build a sweat lodge and perhaps even our own equestrian program.”

The counseling center will provide healing to those struggling with substance abuse, and help clients retain sobriety after going through the program.

“We just want to give the best opportunity with the curriculum we have to set them up in the best way possible with the skills and coping skills that they might need,” Brooks said.

Author

  • Collyn Combs

    Collyn Combs is a multimedia journalism student at Oklahoma State University. She is a member of the Osage Nation, and her family is from the Grayhorse district. Combs is from Ponca City, Okla., and attended school in Bartlesville, Okla., where she graduated in 2017. She served on the newspaper staff at Bartlesville High School from 2016-2017. She attended Northern Oklahoma College in Tonkawa after graduation and wrote for The Maverick newspaper from 2017-2020, and served as editor from 2018-2019. She currently lives in Stillwater, Okla., and is involved with O’Colly TV as the weather reporter, OSU Native American Student Association and is secretary for the Omega Phi Alpha National Service Sorority.

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Collyn Combs
Collyn Combshttps://osagenews.org
Collyn Combs is a multimedia journalism student at Oklahoma State University. She is a member of the Osage Nation, and her family is from the Grayhorse district. Combs is from Ponca City, Okla., and attended school in Bartlesville, Okla., where she graduated in 2017. She served on the newspaper staff at Bartlesville High School from 2016-2017. She attended Northern Oklahoma College in Tonkawa after graduation and wrote for The Maverick newspaper from 2017-2020, and served as editor from 2018-2019. She currently lives in Stillwater, Okla., and is involved with O’Colly TV as the weather reporter, OSU Native American Student Association and is secretary for the Omega Phi Alpha National Service Sorority.
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