During the Aug. rendition of the Carbon County Chamber of Commerce (CCCC) monthly luncheon, a panel was held featuring experts on substance abuse and recovery to educate and inform those in attendance of how they can aid recovery and best support people in recovery within our community.
Panelists included Julie Rosier from Circles, Mersades Morgan from Utah Support Advocates for Recovery Awareness (USARA), Amanda McIntosh from the HOPE Squad, CJ McManus from AJB Broadcasting, Mercedes Williams from the Utah State Office of Rehabilitation (USOR) and Cacillia Jensen from Four Corners Behavioral Health.
Opening the conversation, the panelists were asked the question, “How can we as employers, co-workers, business owners and companies help support you guys and the demographics in question?”
“I think for suicide prevention, it’s just being educated and knowing that there are resources available in our community,” McIntosh shared,” to look for people who are in a suicidal crisis. Showing up to events and showing your support for the efforts that we are trying to make. And just by showing up that goes a long way to not just the other businesses in the community, but also to our community members who are maybe in suicidal crisis themselves or survivors of suicide loss.”
Morgan also spoke on the issue,” I am a woman in long-term recovery, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be in recovery for just over eight years, and to be frank, I thought I would be dead by 25 …. Every single day, we have people in our community that are recovering every single day and you just don’t get to see it.” Morgan continued,” We are very, very lucky that we have all the resources that we do but we must educate ourselves as to what those resources are. If you’ve never been directly affected or you’ve never had a family member you who had to know what these resources are. I encourage you to talk with someone on this panel.”
“We want individuals to get connected to help and get treatment and get resources.” explained Jensen,” And so the biggest thing is just knowing we exist. Let people know, word-of-mouth is huge … If you have things that you want to share with us, feel free to let me know. I’m happy to put that information up.”
The next topic for the panelists to discuss was,” What type of outreach are you performing to employers regarding potential employees in recovery?”
Morgan explained that for USARA, a community project from Mike Schade is putting together a list of employers willing to hire people who are facing court requirements to find employment. “Think of it as a hand up, not a handout,” explained Morgan.
McManus added onto this, reiterating that businesses should leave the stigma behind in the hiring process and talking down on those who are benefiting from government programs, stating that they too are people just trying to get by.
“Until we can work through our biases, we will see barriers in place,” added McIntosh, ending the panel.
The Carbon County Chamber of Commerce holds its monthly luncheon on the third Thursday of each month, with the next meeting being held on Thursday, Sept. 19. To stay up to date with the CCCC, you can visit their Facebook page here.