Managing a sober living house is a demanding, time-consuming task. It’s important to outsource as much of the work as possible in order to keep the workload in check. Oftentimes, that means turning to technology—apps and software designed to do the heavy lifting —for a helping hand.
Today, let’s learn about 5 of the best apps and software for managing your sober living house.
Sober Living App #1: Sober Living App by BehaveHealth
Any list of apps and software designed for sober living homes would be sorely incomplete if it did not include the Sober Living App we developed. Yes, we made it and we have an interest in making sure you know about it but the features alone will make you understand why this app is number one on our list.
Consider what the Sober Living App includes:
Patient Portal: Patients complete all paperwork in one place, where they can also access all the details pertaining to their care. Patients make payments seamlessly through their portal, as well!
Housing: Staff easily track bed management, notes and incidents, drug tests, property management, and vehicle maintenance.
Operations: Create and store communication logs, case management notes, community involvement details, attendance rosters, and patient task lists.
Admissions: Accomplish every step of admissions—from lead management, to application paperwork, to the collection of upfront fees—from the app.
Alumni Portal: Administer discharge planning, outcomes tracking, relapse intervention, and recovery resources to every patient digitally.
You can get a free trial of the Sober Living App here.
Sober Living App #2: Sober Grid
This wildly popular recovery app is worth knowing about and sharing with your residents. Sober Grid helps connect your residents with over 25,000 other people who are also on a recovery journey. The app utilizes your residents’ phone GPS systems to allow them to locate other people in recovery nearby with the option to configure the app to maintain anonymity and privacy, as well.
Sober Grid features a newsfeed where users share snippets of personal news and motivational content—a la Facebook—but it also has sober-friendly features unique to the app, such as a color coded profile box indicating if you’re at risk for using or drinking (red box) or if you’re looking for a ride to a meeting (blue box).
This app is particularly useful to share with residents during discharge planning to help build community support upon leaving sober living. It’s available for free on Apple and Android.
Sober Living App #3: Quit That
This is another nifty app to share with your residents. Quit That is a simple tool to help you track your progress towards quitting literally anything — from sugar to heroin. You can add as many bad habits as you want to the ad-free platform and it will let you know automatically how many days and hours since you stopped the unwanted behavior. It will also track how much money you’ve saved doing it!
It’s free through iTunes and currently only available on Apple devices.
Sober Living Software #4: Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a freemium all-in-one marketing platform that allows you to create powerful email marketing campaigns. The service offers robust support for social media integration, as well.
Thinking of creating an alumni newsletter? How about a referral partner newsletter? These are both great ideas for promoting your sober living house and they can both be easily achieved on Mailchimp.
For lists under 2,000, Mailchimp is free. After that, costs start rising sharply.
Bonus? Mailchimp has a business agreement, meaning it is a HIPAA-compliant email service provider. This is one of the main requirements for creating messages that won’t get you into hot water with stringent patient privacy laws, which makes Mailchimp a great tool for sober living homes.
Sober Living Software #5: Hootsuite
These days, it’s important that you maintain a social media presence for your sober living home. Hootsuite will help you do it in less time.
Hootsuite is a freemium social media management platform perfect for planning and scheduling content on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube. You can see all of your accounts in one dashboard, post content, schedule content, respond to comments, and edit posts all in one place.
The integration with Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube is a little clunky because of the way these platforms operate, but posting to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter is a breeze.
Remember to never post photos of residents or alumni and to never refer to residents or alumni by name in any of your social media profiles. Keep photos limited to staff and the facility only unless you have written permission from your residents.