The current proposed location for House of Hope Recovery Center is situated in planned for Brooke County, West Virginia. Facilities at this center allow for a forty-patient treatment unit in a residential setting, which can be expanded to eighty patients. As such, this facility is projected to have an initial staff of 50 with an annual operating budget of approximately $5 million. It is projected that outreach clinics for outpatient follow-up counseling and for intake will be located in Wellsburg, Weirton and in Follansbee. Expansion could lead eventually to the creation of over 100 new jobs in Brooke County. Given the economic multiplier factor of this number of new jobs and income spent locally, it can be eventually projected that up to 200 new jobs in the Bethany and surrounding area on the Northern Panhandle would be created.  The project is presently raising funds for the initial build of the Recovery Campus. The QRT (Quick Response Team) model of Huntington, WV, provides an excellent model of inter-agency cooperation that is achieving amazing results.

The center will also develop working relationships with the Brooke County Drug Court, the county sheriff’s office and the state police to divert, where possible those suffering from opioid addiction into treatment.  The center will become an integral part of the health system in this underserved area of West Virginia.

While this is a project of Forney Charities, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization chartered in California, its roots in West Virginia run deep, the Forney family having settled in the vicinity of Bethany in 1804.  The Forney Farm (1804) is still in the possession of the family and will sponsor its second annual Wounded Warrior event in August, 2018. Dr. Daniel C. Forney is an alum of Bethany College and his father, Jonathan Buchannan Forney, taught there.  It is our intention to, in the future, spin off a local-to-WV non-profit organization with its own board of directors and advisory board to manage and guide this treatment center in accomplishing its mission.

Now is time to confront the opioid crisis.  We know that recovery is possible. We know that American and Brooke County can do better.