By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News
During the Wednesday, July 2 meeting of the Carbon County Commission, representatives from Utah Support Advocates for Recovery Awareness presented to the Commissioners, seeking funding available through Utah’s opioid settlement funds.
Mersades Morgan, Damon Davis and Evan Done from USARA were all present as the organization sought to keep itself funded amid federal funding freezes.
“We’re here today because, as you may know, the county is going to be receiving some additional opioid settlement funds as a result of the settlement with the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma,” explained Done. “And so we’re asking for an allocation of those new funds that are coming down to the county … we’re asking for $200,000 annually to sustain and expand our currently existing recovery community center here in Price.”
He continued,” This is an investment in one of the most critical and often missing pieces of the puzzle for overcoming addiction; long-term community-based support services that are already working in this community. We’re a recovery community organization, and so we’re staffed by people with lived experience of addiction. We’re all people who have walked the road to recovery, and we use that lived experience to help other people find their path and get better.”
USARA differs from other organizations that utilize this funding in that it is not a clinical organization. This means they cannot bill insurance or collect money from Medicaid.
This leads to USARA often seeking outside funding sources to sustain its programs. At the federal level, USARA received funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. SAMHSA recently found itself on the receiving end of federal budget cuts, with the office scheduled to close in September.
Speaking to Castle Country Radio, Done explained the impact these cuts have had on USARA. “Hits like that mean that we have to find alternate sources of funding, and luckily for us, over the years that we’ve been in existence, we’ve been able to bring together multiple different funding sources from the federal government, the state government, county level and private donations to make ourselves whole. But, any loss of significant funding streams, we have to fill in somewhere else. And so, we’re scrambling right now to figure out what that’s going to look like.”
From SAMHSA, USARA received $300,000 in grant money. With three years remaining on the grant, and the office set to close in September, USARA is facing a potential loss of $900,000 in funding.
Morgan also took the podium to present the Commissioners with some facts on the organization. “I have been managing the recovery center here in Price for about five and a half years. I feel very fortunate to have the work that I do every day. We’ve provided a lot of support to our incarcerated folks going into Carbon County Jail. We’ve got really good relationships with our court systems. We work with DCFS and support families reunifying with their children.”
She continued,” There have been 3,350 times that someone has reached their hand out and they have been able to sit down with a coach. And for whatever reason may be, whether it be for support, for celebratory moments, or for walking through some of the hardest days of their lives, 3,350 times they were met with love, compassion, understanding, and a soft place to land. So we are trying to bridge that gap for those folks that may be falling through the cracks.”
Following the remarks from USARA, Commissioner Jared Haddock sang praises of the organization. “We’re very grateful for what you’ve done in our community. We’ve met with a few of your clients and have heard from them without them knowing that we were checking in on you. They were just very grateful and said that you did fulfill a niche that isn’t currently being met here.”
Commissioner Larry Jensen then explained the next steps for this funding request,” We’re due for all the agencies that have received funds to circle back with us and to report, and we’d like for us to be able to get them in here in the next two weeks. And I don’t think there’s any question in my mind that you guys need the money and that we would give it to you, but we want to sit down and map out how we move forward this next year.”
He added, “And the goal when the money started coming in was to allocate it and then, a year later, have a pretty deep review of the success and see if we need to move and adjust things.”
Due to these mitigating circumstances, the item was tabled for further review.
“If you’ll give us just a few weeks right here to get to the bottom of all of it, it is in my mind there’s no question it should work,” said Jensen.