MN FRESH’s history began when Ruthie Dallas, a Women Services Consultant with the Chemical Health Division of MN Department of Human Services received two commissioned papers from SAMHSA-CSAT’s entitled "Family-Centered Treatment for Women with Substance Use Disorders: History, Key Elements and Challenges" and a Memorandum: "Cost Benefit Analysis of Family Treatment". 

In her effort to improve the services for women and children in Minnesota, Ruthie met in late 2007 with Ellie Skelton, Executive Director of Wayside House. Together they began to get the idea of bringing state providers together to discuss how this new information could improve substance abuse services for families - and how they could better collaborate to share best practices. 

As Ruthie would say…it was not only important to hear from the women services providers – it was just as important to hear from the women they were serving. 

Both Ruthie and Ellie knew that there is power in numbers, and it was obvious that a collaborative coalition just might be able to do that. As a group, they could identify the problems, work to find the solutions and move forward to making the necessary changes that would improve Minnesota’s delivery of services.

So on January 14th, 2008 at the Byerly's Community Room in St. Louis Park, MN they held their first meeting.  It was indeed a lively discussion with about 35 to 40 people in attendance. 

Just as they had hoped, the group wanted to continue to meet, and they did. Eventually deciding their group should be called MN FRESH – Minnesota Network for Families and Recovery through Education, Support and Healing.

… and the rest is history!