Beacon House is a Victorian home and clinic in Fond du Lac that provides a transitional living experience for women on a journey from addiction to recovery—and that now includes freedom from tobacco addiction.
“We provide services to help the woman as a whole,” says Wendy Compton, Development Coordinator for the Beacon House, “from spirituality to eating disorders to addictions, Beacon takes care of every aspect of recovery.”
Staff at Beacon House took the online Bucket Approach training and applied for a mini-grant to implement it.
Now they help residents quit tobacco use by offering a weekly meeting, coaching, nicotine patches and gum. Eight women have participated, three have tried to quit and one resident quit tobacco use for good. As an incentive, the staff offers a free sweatshirt for those who quit.
The seed funding helped get this program started and Beacon House is sustaining this program into the future, initiating it with any new residents who use tobacco products.
According to Beacon House Executive Director Tracy Schmit, “The success of the program is due to the generosity of the UW-CTRI grant. We now have the tools needed to help facilitate smoking cessation with our clients.”
Beacon House draws women in crisis from various counties (Fond du Lac, Outagamie, Winnebago, Waukesha, Jefferson, Calumet Counties) and two Native American Tribes. The average length of stay is 90 to 120 days.
Founded in 2017 by UW-CTRI Distinguished Scientist Dr. Bruce Christiansen, the Bucket Approach has trained approximately 1,000 professionals. This includes about 192 staff from Community Support Programs (CSP) and Comprehensive Community Services (CCS) Systems, as well as 354 other Wisconsin professionals, with the remainder coming from 40 other states and six countries. CSP/CCS staff had a significantly higher completion rate than others (60.4% vs. 31.6%, respectively).