- Family Program
Connections — Our Family Program
Addiction and mental illness don’t just affect the person in treatment. They affect marriages, households, parents who haven’t slept in weeks, and siblings who learned early on to keep the peace.
Decades of research show the same thing: when families are meaningfully involved in treatment, clients do significantly better six and twelve months later — lower relapse rates, more follow-through with continued care, and stronger relationships to come home to.
Alyssa Mueller, CADC II — Clinical Director
Connections is Wavecrest Behavioral Health's family program. It runs three sessions a week for spouses, partners, parents, adult children, and other close family members, alongside your loved one's treatment — and continues after they're discharged. This page covers what Connections is, who can attend, what the weekly schedule looks like, and why family involvement matters as much as it does.
- We work with most PPO providers
We accept most PPO insurance providers.
Complete the form for a free insurance coverage check or call us to speak with an experienced and compassionate team member who can guide you in maximizing your benefits. Your insurance provider will not be notified.
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Who Connections Is For
Connections is built for the people whose lives are wrapped up in a client’s recovery. With the client’s written permission, we welcome:
- Spouses and long-term partners
- Parents (of both teen and adult clients)
- Adult children of a parent in treatment
- Siblings
- Close chosen family or support people, when blood or legal family isn't the primary support system
Not every family member needs to attend every session. We work with whatever family situation you actually have — including remote participation for loved ones who live far away.
Why Family Engagement Matters
Substance use and serious mental illness don’t develop in a vacuum — they develop inside a family system. Over time, a household often adapts around the illness: enabling, walking on eggshells, taking on too much responsibility, or emotionally shutting down. These patterns usually form long before treatment even starts.
If only the client changes, but the household around them stays the same, they come home to the same patterns that helped pull them toward illness in the first place. Connections works on changing that system, not just supporting the individual.
This isn’t just a philosophy — it’s backed by strong research. Family-involved treatment approaches, including Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT), Behavioral Couples Therapy (BCT), and multi-family group therapy, have been shown in multiple studies to improve treatment engagement, reduce substance use, and strengthen family functioning. Our program draws from all of these evidence-based approaches, rather than relying on just one.
— Wavecrest Clinical Team
What the week looks like
Connections meets three times a week during your loved one’s treatment. Sessions are scheduled outside standard 9-to-5 hours whenever possible, with both in-person and virtual options, so distance isn’t a barrier to attending.
Multi-Family Group
A facilitated group with other families going through the same experience. Most families discover something important in that first session: they're not alone, and the patterns they thought were unique to their household are the same ones everyone else in the room has lived through, too.
Psychoeducation
A structured session covering the science behind addiction and mental illness, the difference between supporting someone and enabling them, boundary-setting language you can actually use in the moment, and how to respond to a relapse without the relationship falling apart.
Family Therapy
A therapy session with your loved one's primary clinician, with the client present when it's clinically appropriate. This is where the real repair work happens — direct conversations, updated agreements about how things will work at home, and practice having the conversations that used to feel impossible.
The Clinical Topics We Cover
Throughout treatment, families work through topics that go well beyond just “learn about addiction.” Common topics include:
- The disease model of addiction — how substance use disorders and co-occurring mental illness actually work
- How to tell the difference between support and enabling, using real household examples
- Communication skills: how to raise a concern without triggering shutdown, defensiveness, or shame
- Boundaries in a household where trust has been broken — what a boundary actually is, and what it isn't
- Handling money, medications, transportation, and access to places or situations that used to be triggers
- What a relapse warning sign actually looks like — and what your role is (and isn't) when you spot one
- Sibling and child dynamics, especially in households with younger kids who've absorbed years of stress
- Grief and self-care for family members — this program isn't only about the client
Reintegration & Trust Rebuilding
The hardest part of recovery often isn’t treatment itself — it’s the first six months back home. Roles shift again. Your loved one is present in a way they haven’t been in a long time. Old resentments can surface, simply because it’s finally safe enough for them to. Trust that took years to break down doesn’t come back in a weekend.
Connections is built for this stage. Before discharge, our clinical team helps families put together a reintegration plan — practical agreements about money, phones, medications, curfews (for teens), sponsor meetings, and how to handle that first hard weekend. We practice the difficult conversations in session, so they don’t happen for the first time under real pressure.
Family Therapy After Discharge
Connections continues after your loved one steps down from PHP or IOP. We strongly encourage ongoing family therapy during this period, available through our standard outpatient program and alumni programming. We can also coordinate with a family therapist in your community and provide a smooth handoff with a shared care plan.
Your loved one’s own continuing care runs in parallel through our Alumni Program, so the household and the client are supported through the same period rather than on separate tracks.
Confidentiality & consent
Family involvement always requires the client's clear, written consent, which they can take back at any time, under HIPAA and 42 CFR Part 2. In practice, this means we won't share clinical details about your loved one without their permission — and they decide how much or how little we're allowed to share. That said, Connections' psychoeducation, skills training, and multi-family groups are open to families regardless of what the client has authorized us to share about their individual case, because those sessions are about supporting the family — not about disclosing private clinical information.
Cost & access
Connections is included in your loved one's treatment when they're enrolled in PHP or IOP — there's no separate charge to family members. For families outside their coverage area, or who live too far to attend in person, we offer virtual attendance so distance isn't a barrier.
Connections at Wavecrest Behavioral Health
At Wavecrest Behavioral Health, we treat the household your loved one is coming home to, not just the individual. Three sessions a week during treatment, ongoing family therapy after discharge, and a clinical team that treats families as partners in recovery — not an audience to it.
If you’re the family member of someone in treatment, or considering it, call Wavecrest today at (866) 366-6178 and ask about Connections. We’ll walk you through what participation looks like, whether or not your loved one has been admitted yet.
Reach out for treatment services
Our admissions team is available around the clock to answer questions about our Connections family program, verify insurance, and help you or a loved one take the next step.