Beckley, W.Va. (WVDN) – Jay Phillips, Executive Director of Seed Sower, Inc., announces his non-profit organization recently secured two major grants boosting its capability to offer mobilizing and connecting community resources to increase access to long-term recovery support for people with substance use disorders (SUD) and co-occurring substance use and mental disorders (COD).
The first award is the Building Communities of Recovery (BCOR) grant ($349,646 annually for three years) from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“This is the largest grant Seed Sower has ever won,” said Phillips, who created the recovery support services organization in 2019. “These funds – which were made possible by our organization’s passion, our partners, and our people – will help advance community-based recovery support services throughout southern West Virginia.”
Of $9.6 million in announced grants SAMHSA awarded through its BCOR program, Seed Sower was the only West Virginia grantee.
Seed Sower, Inc., through its Recovery Community Organization (RCO), The Well — the only RCO in southern West Virginia — will expand peer recovery support services across a 10-county rural Appalachian region bearing the highest overdose burden in the nation. The project meets people where they are through a mobile outreach team, connects them to treatment, housing, and employment, and strengthens the peer workforce that delivers recovery support. Over three years it will serve 300 adults in recovery from substance use and co-occurring disorders, building an ecosystem in which recovery is not defined as merely desistance of use, but where people can thrive as healthy, employed, contributing members of their communities.
The project also partners with Dr. David Best and the Recovery Outcomes Institute in a study to strengthen and sustain the peer recovery support workforce by understanding what makes peer workers effective, and by generating the evidence services need to target and strengthen workforce support. The study examines how peer workers’ professional and recovery-oriented functioning relates to the recovery progress of the people they serve, measured using the REC-CAP Assessment within the Recovery Capital Measurement System (RCMS).
Counties to be served are Raleigh, Fayette, Greenbrier, Summers, Nicholas, Wyoming, McDowell, Boone, Mercer, and Monroe. Nine of these 10 counties are federally designated rural, and all 10 are designated Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas.
Goals of the federal SAMHSA grant include increasing access to peer recovery support through mobile and partner-based delivery; strengthening the peer workforce and generating evidence on what makes it effective; increasing access to and utilization of trauma-informed, evidence-based recovery support services and referrals; and deepening cross-sector partnerships that reduce stigma and connect people to care across the recovery continuum.
The second grant is a one-time $105,000 awarded by the West Virginia Bureau for Behavioral Health that will allow Seed Sower to establish an Adult Peer Center.
The new Adult Peer Center will serve citizens 18 years of age or older who reside in Raleigh and surrounding counties throughout southern West Virginia.
Peer Centers offer a safe, accepting space for those with a behavioral health issue. Peer Centers serve the needs of individuals outside of the traditional behavioral health treatment system. Programming includes information, referrals, and advocacy with a strong emphasis on empowering and teaching individuals to be independent while involving them in providing support to other consumers. Socialization activities such as games, discussion groups, small group recreation, or group participation in community events are encouraged.
Its measurable goals are to
- Provide peer coaching and support services in a safe, inviting, nonjudgmental environment to participants experiencing behavioral health issues.
- Educate participants on community support services available and refer upon request for additional services.
- Improve participant socialization, communication, and engagement with peer and community services/initiatives.
- Increase the number of agencies, local businesses, and community support organizations who partner with and support the efforts of the Center.
- Determine consumer satisfaction levels by surveying participants on an informal basis through a peer developed protocol.
Phillips said “Recovery initiatives across the country have each carried remarkable weight on their own. We believe that by coming alongside one another — offering our support as readily as we ask for theirs — we can serve individuals and communities far better than any of us can alone.”
