MCCONNELLSBURG, Pa. (AP) - In a small, intensely private community like McConnellsburg, the stigma attached to addiction treatment and mental health therapy can be an all-but-impenetrable barrier.
“Some families wanted to solve the problem themselves,” says Erin Pistner, a counselor with Fulton Behavioral Health Services. “It can take longer for the family to realize it’s beyond their ability to take care of it.”
Fulton Behavioral Health runs two separate medically assisted treatment programs that combine the anti-craving drug, Suboxone, with personalized therapy to deal with a client’s underlying trauma, arming them with coping skills.
The cash-only program, which protects the patient’s privacy by keeping their addiction treatment off the books of health insurance companies, is by far the most popular in a rural area that still places a premium on family secrets.
That program is currently 90 percent full, while another for clients on medical assistance has 28 clients and is considered full.
Beyond pride, there’s one last barrier to full recovery: If patients are going to move forward from their addictions, they must find meaning in their lives, treatment specialists said.
Returning to meaningful work - not just a job - is seen as one of the last and most important steps in a recovering addicts’ journey back. Unfortunately, it can be the most difficult step of all because of the gamble businesses are taking in hiring someone with an admitted addiction problem and the possibility of a criminal record.
Across Pennsylvania, professionals working with addicts in rehab and recovery cite this need for meaningful employment as being both vitally important and almost wholly unavailable to most recovering opioid addicts.
This is despite tight employment markets in which many open positions, even those in manufacturing, can go unfilled for months. That’s true in Fulton County, a sprawling stretch of mountainous landscape that runs south from the Pennsylvania Turnpike to the Maryland line. Its aging population keeps the area awash in potent medications. But street heroin and its much-stronger synthetic counterpart, fentanyl, have reached the county and many of its 14,000 residents as well. Their fatal impact hit like a fist in 2016, with 11, representing a one-year increase of 267 percent and a per-capita opioid death rate of 74 percent, the highest in the state.
Fulton Behavioral Health Services is currently working with a local manufacturing company on developing a pilot program to provide its recovering addiction clients with a path to family-sustaining employment - a bridge back to a full life. The goal is for the local company to hire an undetermined number of recovering clients, who will be supported and monitored by Fulton Behavioral Health staff.
If it works, the program could be a model for both employers in need of workers and recovering substance abusers seeking to rebuild their lives by landing a decent job.
“If you are employed, it is critical,” says Renee Grimm, a recovery specialist who is putting together the employer pilot program for Fulton.
The project is called Workforce Dignity, and it would bridge the last yawning chasm in the recovery process. It’s slated to begin in October/November 2018 in collaboration with the Fulton Family Partnership. The Workforce Dignity team will provide support to employers and workers from a team approach that will include a licensed clinical social worker, individual and family therapist, certified recovery specialist, probation and/or state parole officer. Others participating will be identified by the employer, which remains unidentified, and the worker.
“Individuals currently in treatment with one of our programs will be considered during the initial implementation of this project,” Gotwals says.
Those associated with this project from a rehabilitation end recognize the risks an employer is taking. To ease those risks, they are offering a true partnership with the employer - a team approach to make this last, most difficult recovery transition actually work for everyone.
If it works, it might help return the county to a rural normalcy it hasn’t seen in a few years.
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Information from: Pennlive.com, http://www.pennlive.com
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