From the Executive Director's Desk
Nicole S. MacFarland, Ph.D

Senior Hope is currently experiencing unprecedented growth in the number of patients we are serving and the increased clinical services we are providing. We attribute such positive change in part to our move to a larger facility and the ongoing commitment of our seasoned interdisciplinary team of dedicated professionals

Our newest program offerings include several group sessions: Cultural Barriers, Psycho-Education (focused specifically on drug addiction) and Anger Management. Looking ahead, there is great deal of enthusiasm and interest from the staff and administration to provide additional clinical programming to meet the growing needs of our older addicted population.



Senior Hope in the Community

♦ Senior Hope administration authored two articles in the fall of 2009: Preparing for the Health Care Crisis of Late-Life Addictions: A Proposed NYS Strategy. Highlighting Senior Hope and one of our successful graduates; and Senior Hope: Success with a Change Project, featuring the national research initiative NIATx/200 (The Network for the Improvement of Addiction Treatment) that Senior Hope has been involved with in conjunction with OASAS (Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services) and the University of Wisconsin for the past several years.

♦ Nicole MacFarland was named NYS Social Worker of the Year (2010) at the annual conference of the New York State Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers on March 12th. http://www.naswnys.org/nicole.html. In June 2009 she was named Individual of Distinction in Addictions Education and Training for NYS from the Institute for Professional Development in the Addictions.

♦ MacFarland co-authored a teaching module with University at Albany faculty, Social Work Intervention in Alcohol and Drug Abuse, recently published on the Council of Social Work Education Gero-Ed Center website to help faculty from across the nation infuse geriatric social work curriculum into their masters programs. http://www.cswe.org/CentersInitiatives/GeroEdCenter/Programs/MAC/13711/33328.aspx.