Board of Aldermen — 12/12/17 Page 8
crisis type of situation, they can rely on their particular coach to advise them and to get them back on track.
Again, making them productive members of the society.
So all this was presented, and it’s definitely fulfilling a need in the city. It’s part of the puzzle again. I’m offering
my full support on this based on the information of the two meetings | attended. | feel quite confident that this is
definitely needed in the city.
Alderman Lopez
I’ve been participating in the Mayor’s Opioid Task Force, the Safe Stations program, and the Continuum of
Care, and there isn’t really a comparable program to this. The closest analogy might be H.E.A.R.T.S. Peer
Support, but there is not a daytime walk-in center offering recovery support. There are periodic AA meetings
and NA meetings throughout the city which are an hour long. You go to those meetings, you come out; you do
build connections, you do get a sponsor. But there are other treatment models, and AA and NA do not work for
everybody. Revive offers an array of different models and programs, and ongoing supports. They’re cultivating
new communities of support. Recently, they just had a forum and an organizational meeting for what to do for
families that are trying to address — like what do you do when your son is an addict, what kind of support is
available? And they’re trying to do things like cultivating support groups for the different populations that are
most specifically affected.
The need for beds is definitely one of the greatest elements, but it’s also pretty well understood in the recovery
community that if you just keep putting people into recovery centers and then you don’t offer a transition out
and help them build their own independence after they’ve gone through the process of detox and adopting
recovery as a strategy, you're losing your investment. We can send people in and out all we want, and they
can bill insurance all they want, but if we’re not helping them rebuild their lives, gain employment, find
sustainable housing, even rebuild some of the connections with their families that they've broken that will then
later on help them build resistance to the risk of relapse, then we're losing the effort that we put in, in terms of
finance, and we’re really losing the effort that they putin, in terms of willpower. All the hours of counseling, all
the hours working in the detox centers, it kind of does rely on this. Furthermore, preventing people from
needing the long-term recovery programs by having them access recovery support programs, like Revive,
before they get to the point where they need to spend 90 days or more in a detox center is huge. Because we
are not going to build the capacity for beds that we need anytime in the near future. We are going to pull out
every stop, everybody who provides these services, like Keystone, like Bedford, they’re going to do their best.
But it’s a huge investment to build facilities with more beds and more trained professionals, more clinically-
qualified individuals; whereas, the recovery coach model deals with the group at the base level much more
efficiently and much more effectively.
There really isn’t a comparable program to this. In the Mayor’s Opioid Task Force, most of the people who
would be bidding on this are competing with this in theory, choosing to devise or create a program that’s
comparable to Revive, have been talking about it for over the last two years and have not been able to do it.
It’s a specific need that hasn’t been filled, and Revive has evolved specifically to fill that need. To my
knowledge, they’re not for profit; they’re less than a year old. In fact, | think they had their ribbon cutting maybe
three months ago. So I’m not really surprised that they haven’t qualified for Medicaid or Medicare assistance,
because those are not simple processes. It takes a lot of application time and a lot of vetting back and forth
before you can qualify for that funding support. | think what we’re looking at here is an opportunity for the city
to identify an obvious gap that the Safe Stations program, the Opioid Task Force, and even the Continuum
have all voiced; that’s there’s no real daytime recovery program. And to run one effectively, you need a peer
recovery coach. So I’m definitely in favor of this. | see it as a very important missing piece of the puzzle. While
it’s true we could tick this off until the next Board takes it on or until we vet it more thoroughly, and | don’t
necessarily know the strengths of weaknesses of that because | didn’t attend the training on sole source
funding, but | think getting them up and running and getting them online immediately is a priority. People are
looking for recovery right now; they’re risking their relapse right now. It’s holiday season; it’s a particularly
difficult time for people trying to find sobriety. And | think if we have a resource sitting on the table that we
could potentially deploy, we have to do it.
