Residential Rehab for Substance Use Disorders

What is Residential Rehab?

In York, you can join Oaktrees, York’s community rehab, which offers 12 weeks of intensive full-time support to address substance use and the issues underlying it. You attend during the day Monday-Friday but you leave for evenings and weekends and sleep in your own bed. Contact the Oaktrees team to find out more: 01904 621776 / oaktrees.york@changing-lives.org.uk, or find out about Oaktrees here.

A residential rehab offers intensive support to address substance use and often the issues underlying it while you live in a residential facility away from York which is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You usually stay for 12 weeks.

Whether you’re accessing community rehab or residential rehab, you start a rehab placement alcohol and drug-free so a detox will usually be required before the placement begins.

For information about the full range of support available for anyone in York wanting help around their substance use, or anyone affected by someone else’s substance use, please see: Help for drugs and alcohol use | Live Well York.

Is Residential Rehab for me?

If you want to be free from drugs/alcohol dependence, staying in York and making new friends and connections whilst completing the Oaktrees day rehab programme is likely to be the most helpful thing for lots of people. Contact the Oaktrees team to find out more: 01904 621776 / oaktrees.york@changing-lives.org.uk, or find out about Oaktrees here. Residential rehab might need to be considered if you, together with your health and support workers, feel you need to get away from York due to your situation or live somewhere that’s staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to gain confidence to live independently.

Whether you do community/day rehab or residential rehab, you will be encouraged to continue to access mutual aid/peer support groups such as Smart Recovery, AA, NA or CA when you complete the programme.

How can I be considered for residential rehab funding?

You can ask any York health or support professional working with you to check your eligibility and if relevant, initiate a residential rehab consideration meeting. This might be your recovery coach at York Drug and Alcohol Service, a social worker, GP, housing support worker domestic abuse support worker. If your health or support worker isn’t familiar with the York residential rehab pathway, you can ask them to contact residentialrehab@york.gov.uk.

If you are already being supported by York Drug and Alcohol Service, please discuss both community and residential rehab with your recovery co-ordinator / keyworker.

York Guide to Choosing a Residential Rehab

Rehab ‘philosophies’ / approaches

All of the residential rehabs approved for York residents have programmes which will involve a mixture of group-work and individual support and are ‘abstinence based’, that is, they aim to help people to stay off drugs and alcohol. You may have other aims – which is fine – it is sensible to aim for things that are achievable, but if you don’t want to sort out the things that are causing your drug/alcohol use and if abstinence is not an ongoing goal, you may find it hard to find a residential rehab that can help at the moment.

Rehabs have different ways of looking at life and drug/alcohol use that influence how they are run, and some combine different approaches or philosophies. There doesn’t seem to be any one approach or philosophy that is clearly better than the others. What is important is that you are able to work with the programme on offer. In fact the main thing that makes a difference as to how well people do after rehab isn’t which type of rehab they’ve attended, but whether or not they finish the programme.

Types of rehab

12-step rehabs are based on the ‘12 steps to sobriety’ of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The programmes are based on the belief that, for people who are severely dependent, control over drug use has been lost and abstinence from all psychoactive substances is the only way to sustain recovery. Not everyone can accept being told how to think about substances – but if you need to completely restructure the way you think about, and react to, drugs and alcohol, this programme can offer you a way forward.

You will usually work your way through the 12 steps (perhaps just some of them, depending on the length of stay). After discharge, all residents are encouraged to attend NA/AA/CA meetings regularly – York has lots of these for you to connect with before and after your residential rehab stay.

In a therapeutic community, staff and clients work together as members of a social and learning community, taking responsibility for the running of the house, including cooking, cleaning, laundry etc.

There may be a hierarchical structure which residents work through where each stage has increasing responsibility and freedom. Therapeutic communities usually work from a belief that people coming into rehab have a self-image and lifestyle that need to be completely rebuilt. This is mainly done within the group.

They tend to have highly structured and intense programmes which emphasise ‘getting in touch with feelings’ and achieving personal growth through their expression. Some people find this powerful and healing, but for others it is too much.

York has a wide range of peer support groups, including very active SMART Recovery groups, which can offer valuable ongoing support after your rehab stay. To find out more about SMART Recovery groups, see https://smartrecovery.org.uk/ or call Claire in York on 07773363166.

Faith-based rehabs have Christian staff and may or may not require residents to participate in faith-related activities such as attending church, studying the Bible and the lessons to be learned from it in discussion and in prayer.

York has a wide range of peer support groups, which can offer valuable ongoing support after your rehab stay.

The programme of a rehab operating a personal or skills development model may focus less on psychological therapeutic interventions and more on the practical skills and knowledge needed to get by in the wider community.

They may be closely linked with local education or employment training providers and residents will spend much of their time in structured programmes of educational classes, training activities and group work.

These programmes use a range of different approaches focused on meeting the needs of individuals.

Other things to think about:

Would a male-only, female-only or mixed gender rehab be best?
Would you be happy to share a room?
How important is the location to you?
Do you need a rehab who offers specialist support such as on-site mental health nurses/psychologists or support for people who have been involved in sex-working?
Do you want to be able to take your children or have your children visit?
Are you pregnant? Different rehabs have different policies around pregnancy.
Do you want to be able to take your pet dog?
Do you want to get more confident cooking as well as things like cleaning, laundry etc to prepare for life after rehab?
Do you want somewhere that has move-on accommodation so that you can stay in the area after rehab?
What house rules do the rehab have about things like phones, visits, contact with people from home, what you can take with you and prescribed medications?

It is best to go into rehab with a commitment to making big changes and being prepared to endure huge short-term stress and emotion to achieve your long-term goals. Success often depends on determination to achieve the goal and being prepared to weather the storms to get there. Choosing a rehab that suits you and being clear about how the programme works will help you get through, so ask as many questions as you want.

Approved rehabs to choose from

City of York Council have approved a number of residential rehabs; please see Residential Rehabs | Live Well York. All of the residential rehabs are outside of York.

Other residential rehabs who meet City of York Council criteria are welcome to apply to become an approved residential rehab provider for York. For details, contact: residentialrehab@york.gov.uk.

Last updated: 05/02/2024

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