Options Recovery Services was founded in 1996 by a visionary group led by Davida Coady, M.D., a physician with international experience in public health. Dr. Coady served as Options’ Executive Director until 2014, and served as Options’ Medical Director until her death in 2018.
Options began as a diversion treatment program for the Berkeley courts. A small group met each week for drug involved offenders who agreed to accept treatment. Finding success and an increase in demand, Options expanded its collaboration with the criminal justice system — courts, district attorneys, police, jails, prisons, and probation departments to promote an alternative approach to address the root causes of crime, homelessness, and broken families.
With limited financial resources, Options developed into a model program serving more than a thousand clients annually and has been a catalyst for changing the way we deal with drug offenders in our state. Options has developed collaborative relationships with area providers, social services, and institutions to promote state-of-the-art treatment and recovery, in a person-centered holistic model of care.
In 2002, Options responded to the need for sober housing for its clients by purchasing a home in West Oakland. Today, Options’ housing stock is extensive. In 2004, the Options Mental Health Clinic opened with funding from the California Endowment. In 2006, a group of clinicians led by Tom Gorham, Options’ former Executive Director, began work inside San Quentin, developing the Addiction Counselor Training Program — this innovative program has expanded to California State Prisons around the state to provide inmates with peer-led Substance Abuse Treatment and certification as peer mentors.
Options now provides an Offender Mentor Certification Program (OMCP) in prisons throughout the state. Inmates are trained as certified addiction counselors and deployed at prisons statewide. Upon release, reentry OMCP clients may intern to become employed as counselors at Options and other partnering organizations.
In 2018, Options received its first perinatal clients at its Alice Street recovery residence. Options contracts with Alameda County Behavioral Health Care Services to provide recovery residence services for up to twelve pregnant and/or newly delivered women in recovery from drug and/or alcohol abuse. Options property on Alice Street in Oakland has been remodeled and outfitted with beds, cribs, furnishings, and utensils to provide a safe and drug-alcohol-tobacco-free home for these clients and their infant children.
Options currently provides substance use disorder treatment, recovery support, and co-occurring mental health treatment at clinics in Berkeley, Concord, Oakland, and San Leandro – serving nearly 1,000 adult clients each year. In addition, Options provides safe and drug free recovery housing for up to 150 clients each night, where in addition to a place to live, the houses provide each resident with peer support and mentoring services. Options provides in-custody treatment and substance abuse counselor training for over 100 inmates at nine state prisons and one county jail. Options is partnering with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to establish a reentry program – featuring a safe and sober residence and individualized services and case support – for former inmates returning to the community. Options also operates an outreach program in Berkeley that provides services and needed support for homeless adults. Options annual budget has grown to over $8 million, and Options now has over $10 million in real property assets.