A county-wide public health network has ambitious plans to open three drug-recovery centers. Now it’s just a matter of funding.
jdoyle@fosters.com
Posted Feb. 17, 2016 at 4:55 PM
SOMERSWORTH — A county-wide public health network has ambitious plans to open three drug-recovery centers. Now it’s just a matter of funding.
The centers — targeted for Dover, Rochester and Durham — are estimated to cost around $100,000 each to operate, according to Liz Clark, community health improvement coordinator at Goodwin Community Health.
One major aspect of the Community Health Improvement Plan, recently released by the Strafford County Public Health Network, is to develop and open recovery centers in the three targeted locations to help deal with the addiction crisis in the region.
According to the plan, the recovery centers will serve as resource hubs and peer support for those seeking or sustaining pathways of recovery from addiction, as well as their families.
“On average, when you’re overdosing, you go to the emergency room,” said Melissa Silvie, director of public health and continuum of care coordinator at Goodwin Community Health in Somersworth. “You’re administered Narcan (a drug to treat narcotic overdose), given a resource guide and told ‘have a nice day.’ That’s how it goes. You come back and do it again and again,” Silvie said.
Silvie said those in the region struggling with drug addiction have no place to seek early-recovery support.
“We need a place, we need to offer multiple pathways to recovery,” Silvie said. “We can’t just say, ‘OK, you’ve overdosed, you want to get clean, but you can only do it this way.’ It’s just not the best way to go about it.”
The goal is to open a center in Rochester in 2016, then in Dover and Durham in subsequent years.
Clark said the hope is to move into an already existing building to keep costs down. “The idea is for them to be on Main Street, to be public,” Clark said. “Ideally you’d like to find something that’s donated, but that’s still in the works.”
Clark said about $10,000 has been raised so far through a variety of fundraisers and a small charitable grant. Other fundraisers are in the works for later in the year. The group has also applied for a community level block grant from the City of Rochester worth $137,000, which is pending approval.
Services to be offered include telephone support and one-on-one recovery coaching by trained and certified recovery coaches.
The plan also calls for an existing work group to develop a business plan and fundraising sustainability for the recovery community centers, develop key volunteer and peer supports to bolster capacity and work with existing family support groups to integrate caregiver resources.
Silvie said the centers will also provide a teen support group for young people who have parents struggling with addiction.
The strategy is designed to complement the health-improvement plan and bridge gaps in services among regional addiction treatment and recovery resources and to reduce the harmful stigma associated with past or present substance misuse, according to the plan.
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