I was hoping to share most of my story here for other women to consider before coming to New Dawn but it won’t allow me to write everything so here’s the shortened version:
First of all, this is NOT gender specific like it says on the website. This is a house with 10 beds, for both men and women. (Men and women do not share rooms though of course)
Pros of New Dawn: The bedroom I shared with two other females was nice, the bathroom and closet were nice and big, and we never really got in each others way. We have group outings, the food was good, staff was nice except for one who I will mention in a moment, and it felt like a little family for the week that I was there. The groups were not very well thought out but I still enjoyed them for the most part.
Now onto the HUGE red flags especially in regard to women:
When I arrived there were two other women already there but they were both going to be discharging within the week. This creates 3 HUGE problems in my opinion:
1. I would be the only woman in the house
2. I would be required to share a bathroom with the men, a bathroom that doesn’t even lock. (or they offered for me to use the men’s private restrooms in their bedroom which is unacceptable)
3. If there’s only one female in the house, No other females can come in until at least 2 men leave.
The day before having to discharge, it was visitors day and I had my boyfriend visiting me. Him and I both watched as Evette, the Intake Coordinator, went around the house and spoke to all of the men about room changes coming up. We listened to her trying to accommodate them in every way but she never came over to speak to me , to notify me of what was going on. Nothing.
I gave her the benefit of the doubt and assumed it was just a really busy day and she would talk to me later that night. I didn’t approach her myself because I wanted to observe what me and other females can expect coming to New Dawn. Fast forward to the end of the night she walked past me multiple times, came to my room multiple times to talk to my roommate about other things, but never said one word to me.
The next morning I tried to call New Dawn Headquarters to tell them what was going on and Ashley, the woman I spoke to, Literally just transferred me to Evette. I thought this was highly unprofessional because obviously I called headquarters for a reason.
So Evette comes into my room and tells me that a new male is checking into New Dawn that morning and that’s why the rooms are all messed up. She said she did everything she could not to take him in because she knew this would happen and for a moment I felt bad for her but again, this isn’t the first time this has happened at New Dawn and I still believe that the way she handled everything was extremely poor.
I told her I needed some time to consider what I’m going to do now and she left for a little while and then came back on the phone with somebody. They were offering for me to go to their Women’s location in Cali but they told me I only had 1 hour to make a decision. So I just went from getting up and getting ready for group, to deciding whether or not I can even stay in treatment anymore and all you can provide is an hour? She didn’t try to comfort me , she didn’t try to show any pictures of the facility, tell me any information about it, nothing. She left the room and I got in the shower , called my boyfriend crying and trying to come up with a decision, and then I decided I’m just going to have to discharge and find something else.
When Evette came back to ask my decision I told her I’m going to just leave and all she said was “Well didn’t you come here for a reason?” I responded “Yes I did and it wasn’t to be surrounded by a bunch of men.” She was not nice or compassionate in any way shape or form and I might be wrong but working in this type of field I would think that having empathy is important.
I wish I could share more but that’s all Google will let me write. I hope that New Dawn addresses this problem quickly as it is not fair to the women who come here seeking treatment.
