October 2023 Newsletter

9th Annual Valley Bag Toss Recap - October 14th

67 Teams competed in this year's Valley Bag Toss at the Alternatives' Whitin Mill! Together, we raised over $23,000 to support Open Sky's health and wellness programs.

Proceeds from Valley Bag Toss will directly fund initiatives such as:

• Health and Wellness Committee
• Annual Kickball Tournament
• Tobacco Recovery Group
• Nutrition Committee
• Health Fair
• and many more initiatives!

Congratulations to the Valley Bag Toss Champions, Simply Baggers, who bested the Beantown Baggers! The winners got to take home custom cornhole boards designed by Nick Hollibaugh, shown in the photo above.

Contest Winners

Best Team Spirit - First Timers

Best Costume - Wixtead Wonders

Best Team Name - We're Sexy and We Throw It

The Bridge Training Institute - Upcoming Trainings

VIRTUAL - Thursday, November 2, 2023, 1:00pm - 4:00pm

Intertwined Issues Series-Intertwined Issues Series - Trauma & Substance Use & Substance Use

Suzy Langevin, LICSW, LADC I & Jean Brickman, LADC I

VIRTUAL - Thursday, November 16, 2023, 9:00am - 12:00pm

Understanding, Managing, and Treating Suicidal Behavior

Barent Walsh, Ph.D.

VIRTUAL - Thursday, November 30, 2023, 9:00am - 12:00pm

Cultural Humility in Supervision

Jenise Katalina, LICSW

Marshmallow Madness at the Family Support Center!

The Autism Spectrum Disorder Social Group participated in an exciting project combining physics and art. The group experimented with various materials to create powerful catapults capable of launching marshmallows with precision.

This hands-on exploration helped the participants gain a better understanding of how forces, trajectories, and energy transfers can impact their results.

After finalizing their catapults, the group had a competition on October 12th with prizes to try out different challenges and show off their creations. Marshmallows were flying everywhere!

Open Sky Community Services Earns National Accreditation for Quality of Programs

Open Sky has been awarded a three-year Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF) accreditation of its behavioral health programs, for meeting internationally recognized benchmarks for standards of care and quality of services.

The areas of strength noted in the CARF report include:

• Open Sky staff providing an environment of care that helps minimize the stigma of mental illness and give a sense of accomplishment to individuals that greatly contributes to their ability to function in the future;
• A positive sense of community for staff and persons served;
• Unanimous praise from referral sources for being a consistently high-quality treatment provider; and
• Open Sky’s strong efforts to identify strategies for employee recruitment, retention and advancement.