Statements
Mission
Mending Hearts helps women restore their lives from addiction through a long term treatment program that offers hope and healing in a supportive community environment - regardless of their ability to pay.
Background
History and Background: Established in 2004, nurturing homeless and addicted women and families to enable them to achieve better lives is what drives our mission. The Mending Hearts model helps to ensure that when a woman completes the program and leaves Mending Hearts, she remains substance-free, mentally stable, a healthy provider for her children and becomes a contributing member of our community. Services are provided to A&D and dual diagnosis (co-occurring) women who have experienced homelessness, have been victims of sexual assault and domestic violence and are coming out of our prisons and jails. Many of the women Mending Hearts serves are uninsured. Our clients have immense barriers to recovery, housing and employment.
Founded: Mending Hearts was co- founded in 2004 by Katrina Frierson, a woman who was in recovery from addiction and knew firsthand about life on the streets, periods of homelessness, incarceration, and lose custody of her children. She lived that life. Trina decided to be the change she wanted to see in her community. By faith, in 2004, she took the money she earned from her cleaning business and gave a home to 7 women in recovery. With that compassionate act, Mending Hearts was created.
Today Mending Hearts is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in Davidson County providing a residential, recovery-oriented, evidence-based and integrated therapeutic community for women who are homeless or are at risk of becoming homeless as a result of their addiction and/or mental illness. There are 16 buildings incorporating 110 beds on campus to house the women who dare to believe that they can achieve the change they need to see in their lives. Mending Hearts primarily serves a 95 county area and is based in Nashville. The need for recovery services for indigent women is so great that women from all over middle Tennessee and surrounding counties and states come to Mending Hearts as their first steps of making a decision for treatment. Mending Hearts has lived out its mission by providing shelter, hope and healing to over 7,000 women.
Impact
With Addiction from Opioids, Fentanyl, Heroin and other drugs reaching unprecedented rates in our country and especially in Tennessee, Mending Hearts strives to provide a safe, warm and nurturing environment where true healing can take place. Mending Hearts values every volunteer, donor, advocate, group leader, in-kind donations of food, clothing and furniture and the list goes on. You pour into the lives of our women every day! You are the hearts in Mending Hearts. Because of your support we are able to advance our mission and vision of bringing HOPE and HEALING to women faced with the awful disease of addiction. Because of your engagement as a stakeholder and your partnership, together in FY2022 our impact is the following: General Demographics: Mending Hearts served 423 homeless or at risk of homelessness addicted women in FY2022 and the target population included three ethnic groups with 15% African-American, 83% Caucasian, and 2% Asian/Hispanic/Latino American or other. Mending Hearts served an age range from 18-65. More than half of the age ranges fall between 25-44. Interesting to note in 2016, 59% of clients had dependent children. Social & Economic Demographics: For the 423 women served in FY2022, 60% were referred through the criminal justice system, 94% are victims of sexual assault, 83% have children and 99% have a co-occurring mental health disorder. Of the 423 women served at intake at Mending Hearts in FY2022, 99% were living below poverty level with food insecurity, 99% are food stamp eligible and 71% were uninsured. When compared to the National average of 11.6%, poverty rate, Davidson County, TN is higher at 16.7%. 98% of 423 women successfully found employment within 6 months, 68% completed one or more clinical programs.
Mending Hearts serves a wide diversity of residents that enter the program with fear, uncertainty, pain and shame. The thread that unites them all is the longing for hope and the desire to abstain from using drugs and alcohol. At Mending Hearts, we believe that life does get better and that a full recovery from addiction is possible.
Needs
"Addiction has emerged as one of the biggest public health crises facing our nation. According to the Centers for Disease Control, Drug overdose deaths have risen fivefold over the past 2 decades. In 2021, 106,699 deaths occurred, resulting in an age-adjusted rate of 32.4 per 100,000 standard population. In Nashville, the need for integrated treatment recovery programs with evidence-based practices in an abstinence-based living community has never been so dire. "Only one out of every 10 Tennesseans that need substance abuse treatment receives it." {Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA 2014)}. Recovery is more than maintaining sobriety. "The components for sustained recovery include: improving health and wellness, safe and secure housing, employment, transportation, clinical treatment and self-care practices and reaching one's full potential and belonging in community. The adoption of recovery by behavioral health systems in recent years has signaled a dramatic shift in the expectation for positive outcomes for individuals who experience mental and/or substance use conditions." (SAMHSA).
CEO Statement
From former Board Chair Yvonne Sullivan and Founding CEO Trina Frierson:
After enduring a second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have all had to face numerous difficulties. Our women are used to facing enormous challenges every day. Before coming to Mending Hearts, the typical client has faced homelessness, incarceration, unemployment, and the loss of their family due to their addiction. Once they enter our program, they leave those challenges behind but face a whole new set of different challenges; working through the traumas or events that led them to addiction. Through intensive therapy, they learn how to deal with their traumas, recognize their triggers, and learn new tools to deal with those triggers to avoid relapse. They learn how to overcome their pasts, regain their self-worth, and move forward to a new life. With over 70% of our incredible staff at Mending Hearts in recovery themselves, they walk beside these women and support them every step of the way. At Mending Hearts, we overcome.
Facing the difficulties of a COVID-19 world, we pushed forward and accomplished our primary goals for the year:
• We found funding to fill the financial gap caused by increased building costs and broke ground on our newest residential home on campus, which will house eight women.
• We started a Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP). This intensive daily therapeutic program allows us to treat more women as we can provide it on both an inpatient and outpatient basis.
• We increased the number of classes we provide for Intensive Outpatient Therapy (IOP), a step-down program from PHP, to serve more women.
• We started a national day of recognition, "Women Touched by Addiction." This day seeks to remove the stigma of addiction by bringing together all women touched by addiction (mothers, wives, daughters, friends) to start the conversation that addiction is a disease, not a moral failure.
Our goals for the upcoming year are ambitious, but since its founding, Mending Hearts has always dreamed big. In 2022 we plan to:
• Double the size of our detox program from 4 beds to 8 beds to serve women when they are at that crucial point of deciding to take the first step towards sobriety.
• Due to the significant increase in rental rates in Nashville, we are exploring building a multi-family affordable housing project with wrap-around services. This project would provide our alumni and other women in recovery with affordable independent living apartments surrounded by a community of other women in recovery.
Service Categories |
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| Primary Category: | Mental Health & Crisis Intervention - Substance Abuse Dependency, Prevention & Treatment |
| Secondary Category: | Housing, Shelter - Homeless Shelters |
| Tertiary Category: | Human Services - Human Services |
Areas Served
Mending Hearts serves women from all 95 counties in Tennessee, with 60% of the women we serve are from Davidson County. Mending Hearts also admits women from other states.
| TN - Davidson |
| TN - DeKalb |
| TN - Dickson |
| TN - Fentress |
| TN - Franklin |
| TN - Giles |
| TN - Hickman |
| TN - Houston |
| TN - Humphreys |
| TN - Jackson |
| TN - Lawrence |
| TN - Lewis |
| TN - Lincoln |
| TN - Macon |
| TN - Marshall |
| TN - Maury |
| TN - Montgomery |
| TN - Overton |
| TN - Perry |
| TN - Pickett |
| TN - Putnam |
| TN - Robertson |
| TN - Rutherford |
| TN - Smith |
| TN - Stewart |
| TN - Sumner |
| TN - Trousdale |
| TN - Warren |
| TN - Wayne |
| TN - White |
| TN - Williamson |
| TN - Wilson |
| TN - Cumberland |
