DECATUR, Ill. (WAND) – A grant with Workforce Investment Solutions will fund a collaboration with Crossing Health Care to provide education, training and jobs. The group hopes to get people recovering from an opioid addiction back to work.
"We already had a project at play to treat addiction. What we understand and what we know is that we can treat addiction medically, and we're doing that. But you also have to address purpose," said CEO of Crossing Health Care, Tanya Anderson.
In October 2017, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared an opioid crisis nation public health emergency. The addiction presents significant obstacles to employment and self-sustainment. But with obstacles comes opportunity.
"Workforce Investment solutions is excited to receive a $1.3 million grant over a two-year period to assist in providing disaster relief employment to alleviate the effects of the opioid crisis in Macon County," said CEO of Workforce Investment Solutions, Rocky Wilkerson.
Construction is already under way at the Crossing Health Care Campus for Facilities to treat drug addiction.
"That is what this grant money is going to be used for. To assist these individuals through a transition, through a pathway, where they're to self-sobriety self-sufficiency. And most importantly they become important members of our community," said Wilkerson.
"We truly felt that was one of the missing pieces to our programming so as we're looking at comprehensive individualized care for our patients. It was really that education and workforce component that was missing," said Julie Briley of Crossing Healthcare.
The rehabilitation, education and training will all be performed on the new Crossing campus.
"The unique part of this opportunity is there will be jobs on Crossing Health Care Campus that we'll have job coaches monitoring. And we will transition those patients to employment outside in our community," said Wilkerson
Crossing will help make sure they can pass all of the things that are needed to get a job.
"Sometimes they can't pass the workplace readiness assessment that they need to take in order to get into Caterpillar or ADM. This grant will allow us to hire individual tutors to sit with each of these clients individually one on one," said Shannon Mittleman of Crossing Healthcare.
The addition of workplace training and education can help addicts in the recovery process and turn the odds in their favor.
"Feeling like you are a contributing member of society is really valuable. So, helping our patients get back out to society, get back out to be able to support their family is really what we feel is one of those key components in maintaining sobriety," said Briley.
The new grant will take effect on Nov. 1.
