Bristol Lifestyle Recovery — Local services in Bristol

I saw the last review when I came to leave a simple post-employment review and I have no words to challenge it as a former employee. I will say that the parent company of BLR, Fairview Housing, cares more about saving a dollar than saving these men. The comments about the roof and beds are true. A lot of the previous review sounds like a resident with some serious legitimate complaints, but I will say that residents do go days and days without their meds upon intake and refill, causing PAWS symptoms to return because they’re mostly without Suboxone, and causing initial withdrawal symptoms to be exacerbated as well. From the last review, I can’t detect any lies. There are things I didn’t see while I was there, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.

There are many amazing people that work there, mostly the peer recovery specialists and their program director, Polly. (The Lead Clinician Brittany is solid and is a voice of care and concern for these 80 men. These folks keep it from being a one for me.) That program is flawless and I would recommend it. If you could take it and move it to a different facility in Fairview, I would because BLR is a hot mess.

This isn’t BLR’s fault, but having a huge casino behind the facility leads to a LOT of lapses and relapses, so if gambling and alcohol are a struggle for you and you aren’t strong enough to say no yet, don’t choose BLR until you are because that temptation is there 24/7/365.

The ladies in the kitchen are absolutely amazing and they try their best with the subpar ingredients they are given, so the complaints about the food are not their fault - they’re Fairview’s fault for buying everything out of a can. I never tried the cake they talked about but I did hear it was good.

Every place is what you make it, too. If you don’t have another facility to go to, just keep your head up and do what you’re required to do to complete the program.

Some of the best employees are in the front office and in the back end on billing and insurance. You never see them but they care about you and your stay. This is why there isn’t a one star.

The two stars are because the leadership absolutely sucks and drains the life from everyone. The nepotism claims are true, the claim about the counseling program is true, bro owns it and is in leadership (which I’m just now realizing is sketchy), lots of families do work there but it’s not always a bad thing. I mean, each person will have their opinion about it. There are some residential technicians who don’t treat the men right, but there are so many more that do to make up for it.

Summarizing everything, HR does absolutely such and I like the “they’re inept” accusation because of some things that occurred to me while I was there that were handled like someone never worked HR a day in their life, then they lost medical documents, made me sit in the room with someone who was harassing me on multiple occasions, did nothing about it, failed to handle a raise, failed to investigate claims against leadership why lying that they did, etc..

Other leadership is hilarious because employees literally mock them for talking for years in meetings and being so dollar-driven and clinically oblivious that they have no business there.

Ahhh, this wasn’t meant to turn into...

This place is absurd. The roof is leaking everywhere and they can’t afford to replace it so they “patch it” on the inside with caulk. There’s mold in the walls and ceilings. There were huge donations for new mattresses but the clients are still sleeping on glorified prison mats for the most part. The food is terrible except for the cake. They don’t understand special diets and they deny clients the special requests they have for their religious reasons and try to feed them things that do not match their diet. Clients walk around hungry due to this. Clients go days and days without meds they need. The facilities for laundry and the showers are a joke. In house HR is inept and lies about their efforts to follow through with complaints. They’re so poor that they’re cutting all peer supports down to part-time. The lack of funds in this company is pathetic. Whoever is in charge of accounting is inept.

As far as the employees? They have to buy their own supplies because there’s never any copy paper, they don’t provide you with the basics like filing cabinets or storage for private client information.

Nepotism is alive and well. Not only that, but one of the managing directors has a very clear conflict of interest because the in-house counselor works for HIS counseling company, Next Steps, LLC. So when the clients need a referral for counseling, it goes to HIS company to pad HIS pockets. This is unethical and despicable. The only saving grace is the counselor that he hired is a saint. He also hired his relative as a manager on duty. Several families work for this facility.

Some of the counselors get complained on over and over by the clients and NOTHING gets done.

Did I mention that there is mold everywhere in...

I think these people are just horrible. Addicts go in there to get help with thier addiction and they saddle them with an EVEN WORSE ADDICTION. People that have absolutely no addiction to opiates SHOULD NOT be forced to take Suboxone which is one of the worst things to come off of. They are coming in for one addiction and leaving with an even worse one. These people should be ashamed of themselves. What happened to the Hypocratic Oath that Doctors take that basically translates into DO NO HARM....Well the Suboxone doctor is definitely causing harm when someone comes in for a meth addiction which is not physically addictive and they force them to take Suboxone which is VERY physically addictive and is supposed to be used to get an OPIATE Addict away from opiates!!! It's a money raquet and this doctor should have his license taken away. Shame...