Mental Health Matters
Todd Weatherly, Therapeutic Consultant and mental health professional hosts #MentalHealthMatters. Interviewing doctors and therapists, treatment professionals, organizational leaders, and other members of the mental health community about the importance of mental health awareness, treatment and the future of addressing mental health in the US. Discussing how to support mental health in our communities from hospitals to the dinner table and what to do when crisis arises.
Mental Health Matters
Empowering Recovery Through Community with Webster Bailey
Join us for an engaging conversation with Webster Bailey, the Executive Director of the Metro Drug Coalition (MDC) in Knoxville, TN, who shares his inspiring work championing community-based recovery programs. Discover how his personal experiences in long-term recovery has fueled his passion for creating a thriving recovery community, and learn about the critical role of community support in addressing co-occurring mental health and substance misuse disorders. Coming to us from the home of the MDC, the Gateway Recovery Center, where evidence-based practices, education, recovery support, and harm reduction programs are making a significant impact.
The MDC stands out by providing rapid access to treatment, reducing wait times dramatically, and offering a welcoming environment powered by the dedication of volunteers, talented staff, and local agency collaboration. Dive into insights drawn from a successful community center model revealing how such programs build bridges to sustained recovery and foster hope and transformation.
With innovative programs at the heart of their center we hear about the House Managers Academy, a 10-week curriculum crafted to enhance peer support and positive outcomes in recovery residences. The benefits extend beyond residents, with house managers experiencing improved recovery rates as they apply their training personally. Practicing methodologies found in private pay residential centers such as trauma-informed care and alternative practices such as sober yoga classes and art therapy, Webster shares his vision of more inclusive and effective recovery environments for the future.
Hello folks, welcome back to Mental Health Matters. On WPBM 1037, the voice of Asheville independent commercial free radio, I am Todd Weatherly, your host, therapeutic consultant, behavioral health expert. With me today is a gentleman I've known for many years now crossed the line from us in East Tennessee. Colleague and friend of mine, webster Bailey, joins us today. Webster serves as the executive director for the Metro Drug Coalition, the MDC. After a 15-year career working in private residential addiction treatment, he joined the MDC full-time in April 2023, serving as director of development for one year to close out the capital campaign for the Gateway Recovery Center.
Speaker 1:Webster's career in the treatment field was primarily focused on business development and missions, but, as a person in long-term recovery himself, he has dedicated his career to helping others recover from the disease of addiction. Webster has had a long-standing involvement with MDC, dating back to 2006,. He was a member of the MDC's community coalition from 2006 to 2012, and then a board member for eight years from 2012 to 2020, serving as a board president from 2015 to 2017. As a result of his dedication and involvement in recovery work as a residential treatment, webster is a repeated honoree in his community. In 2013, he received the Community Service Award from the Tennessee Licensed Professional Counselors Association, the Recovery Services Award from the Metropolitan Drug Commission in 2014, and the Prevention Champion Award from the Blount County Community Mental Health or Community Health Initiative in 2015. In 2016, he was named Professional of the Year by the East Tennessee Association of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselors, edac, and later received their Lifetime Achievement Award 2023. Congratulations on all that, webster.
Speaker 2:It's like I'm an all right guy from hearing you.
Speaker 1:You know, I tell you, it sounds pretty good to me. Who is that guy? I tell you it sounds pretty good to me.
Speaker 1:Who is that guy? And then, of course, the biggest thing that you do is help your wife, Robinella, by managing and promoting her music and art career. Serve as the board of directors for Clearfork Coal Company and Prevectus Biopharmaceuticals, and in 2017, I didn't know this you launched a new clothing and apparel line for recovering people called Higher Powered Lifestyle Apparel Company. That's cool, Webster. Thanks for joining me and welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me, Todd. It's good to be with you, man.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you what Well you and I have known each other. A minute Gosh. I think we met back in 2010,. Maybe.
Speaker 2:Certainly could have been. It's been a while.
Speaker 1:It's been a while I think we got a decade on us at least yeah, and you know, the thing that I have always appreciated about you is just, you know, honest sincerity. You're a genuine and authentic person, and I think that is probably, if I was going to name anything that it requires to do recovery, well, I'd say that's probably it. Um, and I and you know. Just to just to talk about the, mdc is a non-profit organization serving to create healthy and safe community free of substance misuse. Uh servedved Knoxville community for 38 years. The goal is to increase access to evidence-based prevention, education, harm reduction programs and recovery support services for anyone desiring to maintain or seek a life free from substance misuse. And you guys are in the center that you you helped do the fundraising for. That's where your office is Is that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm here right now. Man, I'm up, I'm a, I'm in, like there's some office space upstairs above a community room. So below me I, you hopefully you can't hear it, but I can there's people lifting weights. Uh, there's people shooting and ping pong, uh, all that you know kind of stuff going on right now.
Speaker 1:So Was this a plan ahead? Did you help fundraise for the building and like? I think I need to make a corner office for myself with this thing. I'm not that smart, Todd. Okay, Me either, Um.
Speaker 2:That sounds like a game of chess. I'm a more of a checkers player.
Speaker 1:I heard that, um, well, you know, I think I think a day at a time is probably not a bad way to go anyhow. Uh, and you know for me and I come pretty strongly from the, from the mental health side and then with a, you know there's this large population of people that that sits right there in the co-occurring. You know they suffer mental health conditions, they have substance misuse as part of sits right there and they're co-occurring. You know they suffer from mental health conditions, they have substance misuse as part of their story and their you know their recovery can be complicated and it certainly can come with heartache and tragedy. That you and I have both seen in these communities time and time again.
Speaker 1:And you know one of the things that we all know, and I think that if you dig very far, community is a. There's a saying for a treatment company that's out there that community is the intervention and the solution. And so you know the one thing that we lost with some of the legislation some of the things that happened across the country and everything else in mental health were clubhouses. You lost these community centers where people who felt kind of estranged and felt like they were different could come and find community and do things like that. And it sounds to me, even though your population is a little different, the MDC is very much like that. It's this community center where people can come find community, they can find education, they can find care, they can continue their recovery journey however they landed on it or started it and then find people like you with many years in recovery and know that that story is out there and know that that's something that's possible.
Speaker 1:What is it like coming from? I'm really interested in the answer to this question. What is it like coming from the private pay residential treatment side, you know where, you know insurance billing and people paying out of pocket and things like that into a community resource like the MDC? What do you see as the big differences in terms of, you know, organization, programming, leadership and all that stuff?
Speaker 2:Well, there are a lot of vast differences, todd, and then there's also some, probably some surprising similarities too. The difference is really, I will say, in some way shape or form, and this is by virtue of the work we're doing, but also by the location that we decided to build and to create this place we are in, located in basically a corner of downtown Knoxville, in what people would consider to be the most dangerous and worst part of our community. We are in Homeless Central. That is right where we located ourselves. So the mission, the overnight, you know, missions across the street, the rescue mission, and then you've got all these housing agencies, and so we're right in the middle of the homeless encampments and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:And so what I would say initially, the first difference is, while there's desperation and heartache in private pay, private treatment centers, there's a different level of it. What we're doing right now these know, these are the folks maybe went to places that I used to work and other for-profit agencies and treatment centers. You know, some five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and, for whatever reason, their recovery, I'll just say, didn't take, for lack of a better term, and they continue to lose more and more and more stuff. And so we're we're serving people who are, who are literally at the bottom. You know what I mean? There's, there's, the only place to go down from here is death and uh, and so we're trying to to to work with those individuals and help them find find some hope, um, so I mean. So the difference is the level of desperation. The difference is the level of flexibility that we get to have in how we do things and how we shape the culture of our community center. So this is a place where everybody gets to be themselves, and you get that to some degree in a treatment center setting as well.
Speaker 2:But we are we're absolutely not a treatment center. We are a recovery communities where people walk through our door, sometimes after just using in the alley behind our building, or maybe they're dope sick or they're going into withdraw from whatever substance they've been using, and they say, hey, I heard you guys could help me here. I need detox, I need you know. And then they just kind of tell us what their needs are. And we are really fortunate. We're kind of like a Swiss army knife in that we have different tools to meet people where they are, different tools to meet people where they are and it might be that they have no money, no insurance, no ability to really care for themselves, but they want help and so we've got a person whose position is to coordinate all of that care. And so we maintain relationships across the state of Tennessee, because all of our funding within Tennessee. If you're going to help someone access a grant bed, they've got to be a resident of the state of Tennessee. You know so.
Speaker 2:But we we maintain relationships at all of these places and we're able to get people who are desperate with without any money in their pocket and no insurance policy. We're getting them in treatment 24 to 48, sometimes less, sometimes it's on the moment. And that's coming from a place where, in our community, it was typical to have a four to six month waiting list so that if you were to be that person picking up the phone call and saying, hey, I need help, I need a grant bed, they'd get you on a waiting list and they'd call you in four to six months. And now we're making that 24 to 48 hours on a regular basis and that's pretty cool to be able to help those folks that really don't have anywhere else to turn.
Speaker 2:We rely a lot on volunteerism here, and that's volunteerism that comes primarily through the recovering community, but also through a variety of channels. It's really amazing. So when we started doing this, you had the Knox County Probation Department, you have the Recovery Court, all these governmental agencies who are, you know, tend to be more. You know, their approach tends to be more coming from a judicial standpoint.
Speaker 1:They're a little more punitive over there.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. But they love what we're doing and they send all their people here to get their volunteer hours and to, because they know that while they're here doing volunteerism, they're also going. Recovery is going to rub off on them, naturally it does, and so we've got folks here who you know walk in and they're, they're, they're volunteering and they they don't even know where they're coming. They're just coming here because they got to do eight hours or 20 hours or 100 hours, and and then by the end they, they identify themselves in a different way. You know what I mean, like in terms of whether it's recovery or just more knowledgeable about the whole recovery, uh, movement and lifestyle. So so that's really um we I want to tell you about. Can I? Can I just tell you about some of the different things that happen?
Speaker 1:yeah, absolutely. I want to know all about it please again.
Speaker 2:So it kind of goes back to that old, that older. You know, when we were kids, like you, had community centers they were. You know that's, we were kids like you, had community centers they were, you know, normal and natural. We're learning how to play basketball yeah.
Speaker 2:So so that was the idea we took. As this idea was coming to MDC it was. There were some other agencies around the country doing a really good job of doing this kind of work. One of them's in Marietta, georgia, and it's called the Zone. One's in Sandusky, ohio, and it's called the Artisan Center, and so we did field trips and we went and looked at these places and tried to get a feel for what is it that they're doing here and is this translatable?
Speaker 2:Does this make sense to do in Knoxville? Because what we know, and know this as well as anybody, is we can, we can pick people up off the ground and send. When they discharge from treatment successfully and they get the coin and everybody says, man, you're going to do great, you've done awesome in treatment, and we send them home. If we don't help them transition into a new recovering, supportive community in their home area. They might make it a day or two or a week or a month or you know. But but if, if nothing changes, nothing changes Right In terms of how they spend their time, what?
Speaker 1:they short lived.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the goal here was to create a, a bridge, basically a gateway, if you will, into this new lifestyle. And so we, when, um, when you, if you were to walk uh downstairs, uh, right now, you'd encounter people who are a day clean, a year clean, a decade clean an hour clean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and still, probably some still using, you know, not flagrantly, obviously we don't. We try to create a safe space and environment. You know what I mean. But, um, obviously we don't we try to create a safe space and environment. You know what I mean, but but yeah. So I mean, there's, the magic happens when you're able to put people together and you're able to help just make connections between people, and that transfer of spiritual, what have you happens, that that transfer of knowledge and connection is what is what brings people back. And so we kind of we function as a resource center and, like I said, you can walk in and you can say I need treatment, and we're going to get you into treatment really quick. Or you can walk in and say, hey, I need help figuring out how to get my driver's license back. I don't, you know, I've got to pay these fines, I got to do these things. So we'll actually assign you, free of charge, a recovery coach and that's somebody who will basically it's not case management, it's, it's a. We use a credential called certified recovery coaching out of Connecticut and we use that model and and and so we'll basically help you figure out what your recovery plan looks like and then we meet with you weekly or a couple of times a week or as much as it takes, to help you achieve these goals that you have for yourself. We, we host 12 step meetings here. We host other recovery meetings that are not 12 step based. We're trying to be that no wrong door. So if 12 steps are not your thing but you're into Dharma recovery, well come on. We got that too. We do. We, you know, we've, we've done a lot of those things.
Speaker 2:We teach art classes. I wish I could show you some of the art that we have. So we've got an incredible teacher instructor here who teaches a few art classes a week and and usually it's usually the people in his class or are, uh, they're, they're in a halfway house, they're not working, yet they come here to spend their time because in their halfway house they've, they're, you know they're saying, hey, if you don't have a job, then you need to be over at the gateway, going to meetings, working with a recovery coach, doing those kinds of things. We've been really fortunate to build great relationships with recovery residences in Knoxville and uh, and so you'll get these, you know, burly guys who have no interest in art whatsoever and now they're sitting in an art class in front of an easel with a blank canvas and a bunch of you know oils and all. I mean we have all the materials. It's really great. Our community has really showed up and and every time we have a need for something, people bring it over.
Speaker 1:It's pretty remarkable, um but is that some of the hanging on your wall back there? You got a little bit probably that one's.
Speaker 2:Uh, that was a barter deal that actually came from a lady in North Carolina, believe it or not, all right.
Speaker 2:And, uh, we traded a piece for that piece. But there's stuff downstairs that that's equally as cool as that. But anyway, so Denver's approach. Denver is our instructor, denver Johnson's name. He's amazing. And he'll sit down with these men or these women and say, you know, and they're like, I don't know how to paint, I don't know what I'm doing. And he says, that's OK, I do just do what I do. And so you know, there'll be an image that they're going to paint up on the wall. It'll be a landscape or something. He says this is our subject for the day and he starts doing his little. We call him little Bobby Ross.
Speaker 2:You know he'll start doing a stroke here and a stroke there and he's like, ok, y'all just do what I do, follow me. And then you know, 30 minutes into that process, their painting is taking shape and it's looking like something. And it's like they've surprised themselves even on what it looks like. And then he turns to them and he says something like you know, recovery works the same way. You don't experience with it, but when you find somebody who knows what they're doing and you just do what they do, then you get what they got. You know what I mean, and so it makes that very relatable to the.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. I love that story man.
Speaker 2:They come back the next day and they're like can we take another art class? You know what I mean next day and they're like can we take another art class? Answers are literally full of artwork that are. That is gorgeous, and people are when people come, like the mayor comes here and the county mayor, the city mayor, like a lot of people, really love what we're doing, because we're trying to to to create an opportunity for people in recovery, but we're also trying to show the rest of the community that recovering people aren't to be feared or Feared or cast out, or they're normal people.
Speaker 2:Delittled Right. So you have people coming in here and they're like, oh my gosh, this is incredible. Like, look at this. And they'll look at the artwork. And they're like, do you all sell this stuff? And I'm like, do you want to buy some? Maybe that's your next fundraiser, right there, you know, I've been brainstorming and I'm just kind of letting it come to me. I'm I uh trying to trying to be just slow with it and uh, but I would only want to do that if we were able to take that. So let's just say, uh, some, uh, a young mom in recovery, or whomever you know was the, was the painter on that piece. I would only do that kind of a fundraiser if, if we could get her some of the money too you know what I mean like, yeah, help her out.
Speaker 1:They saw some benefits from that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I mean yeah, brainstorming that, trying to roll that around in my in my little head, uh, figure out what that could look like. But yeah, so we're doing all that kind of stuff. The other thing that I'll mention before throwing it back to you for another question or something is so a lot of the folks that we work with are in recovery residences I used the term halfway house a few minutes ago, but the proper term is recovery residents these days and and so a lot of those folks come here for support because recovery residences many of them, they just they don't have a lot of support built into it.
Speaker 1:It's more of a during the day they don't right there's to do during the day.
Speaker 2:It's just you know where they eat and sleep and and do those kinds of basic things in a community environment. So we have a lot of those recovery residence communities kind of use this as their daytime home, which is fantastic. And that's what we were hoping for. And what we figured out is that recovery house managers often don't know what they're doing. They want to be helpful, but if you get, if you're living in a recovery residence and then you're probably pretty young in recovery themselves.
Speaker 2:So usually it's just the person who's the the with the most sobriety, in the which it might be a day more than the next guy or or whatever, and so a few months clean, or six months or maybe a year, but they've certainly not been having, they've not had the opportunity to, to grow from a professional standpoint. They're not counselors, they're not clinicians, they're not, they're just they're not even really trained.
Speaker 1:peer support, I mean, you know what I mean Like exactly.
Speaker 2:So what we did. A lady named Ann Young, who was my right hand woman at the residential facility I was at, and she, she told me early on when I came over here. She said, the moment, you have an opportunity for me, I'm coming with you, so just call me. And so I called her and she's been here a little over a year now. And so I called her, and she's been here a little over a year now, but what? She saw this opportunity and she said hey, why don't we start a house managers academy where we take these people in, because we're working with 28 recovery residences? And she said, why don't we start this academy? And we'll put together a curriculum and we will teach these people what peer support is. A curriculum. And we will teach these people what peer support is. They'll. It will design a class, a training academy, and they will get a certificate at the end and and so we've put together a curriculum and it's a 10 week class that they take.
Speaker 2:We offer some in the evening, some in the mornings, but basically they start. You know, it's just like any, it's like a college course, where you start with your group and you finish with your group, and and we teach these folks what they need to know to be the to be the most helpful to their community at their recovery residence. So it is trauma informed care. It's very basic, you know. I wouldn't say medical care but but overdose reversal, because those things happen in recovery residences. So we have to train individuals on how to reverse an overdose and how to deal with mental illness within that, because that happens and things get out of hand.
Speaker 1:There's no such thing as addictions without mental illness, in my opinion. You know, by the time somebody suffers at that great length, yeah, they've got some stuff. They're going through for sure.
Speaker 2:So so you can imagine, you know 10 of the most important topics that these individuals need to spend a couple hours learning about and talking about. Um, that's what we're doing, and then we graduate these classes. We've had uh, I think we're on our sixth class right now, so we've graduated like 64 people, I think, from that academy, which is pretty remarkable.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. We need that in Asheville.
Speaker 2:Here's what we're noticing. Our goal was better outcomes in the recovery residences and that's happening. We're helping them understand that we're and this wasn't our outset but that some of their policies that they have in these different homes aren't conducive to. You know, the reality is, if you're going to drug screen your people which you should, you know, if you're running a recovery residence, you need to drug screen everybody, but you probably shouldn't drug screen them at 10 o'clock on a Friday or Saturday night, because what happens is when you get a positive test now, you're forced to deal with it right now and you're going to put them out on the street. If that's your policy, you're going to kick them out at 10 or 11 o'clock on a Saturday night and there they have nowhere to go.
Speaker 1:They, you know you put you're just going to go down the flume at that point.
Speaker 2:It's. So we said let's look at what does it look like to drug screen at 8 or 9 am on a Saturday or a Sunday. You know what I mean that way that if you do have a positive test, then you have a whole day to work with an individual on a transition plan, on figuring that out, and if they test positive, if they're going to test positive on Saturday night, they're going to test positive on Sunday morning. It's. You're not missing, right, you're just you're helping protect that individual. So, anyway, just small stuff like that. But then the other thing that's happened that I didn't see coming, which is really cool, is that the outcomes for the individuals who take so recovery you know house managers, they relapse to Right, yeah, they absolutely do. But but what's happened through this course is their recovery rates are better because because they're getting, they're getting trained and they're learning some stuff, they're applying it to themselves.
Speaker 1:And they have a community too. I mean, you know, Yep.
Speaker 2:So anyway, it's amazing stuff. So anyway, I feel like I've been talking nonstop.
Speaker 1:I should no, well, I mean you know all that stuff is. I mean I think you know the question I was asking about what's this overlay? We see a lot of these services. We see a lot of services and you see a lot of stuff and and whistles and bells. You know you got in in private pay Right, and it sounds like with many years of experience, um, that you've been able to advise what is not, what is, you know, serving people at the bottom.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But with the same level of care.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, dude we teach, we have, we have sober yoga here, so there's nothing cooler than coming in here in an on an afternoon during yoga class that's led by a woman with about 15 years clean, and she couldn't get clean any other way. What? What yoga did it for her? Like she tried 12 steps, she tried church, she tried, you know, she tried all the stuff and yoga was her, was her thing. Like she's become all these levels of certified yoga instructor and that's what she does is. She teaches sober yoga all around Knoxville and so she teaches a class here. But when you, when she teaches the class, you've got and this is one of the most beautiful things, when you're doing a yoga class and I take the class, uh, as often as I'm able to and you got people who drive in from the nicest parts of town and their Lexus and park in the parking lot and then you got the guy who pushes his his uh shopping cart from under the bridge to come in here and do yoga side by side. That is powerful.
Speaker 2:It's really cool stuff that's community right there man it's what community uh, yeah, so we're doing, we're doing some really cool stuff, uh, and it just continues to unfold. Um, and so, yeah, you can have bells and whistles, but what I've found is there's a lot of people who, who, who have the bells and whistles and who want to contribute them, and that's just as therapeutic for them to say, hey, I would love to come down and teach this, or teach that there's a lady wanting to start a Pilates class and you know all the, and it's like, dude, bring it on, like yeah we'll make room.
Speaker 2:It's really cool stuff, so, which I know is important to you as well.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, oh yeah, well, a big question that I ask. You know I get when we interview folks on the show and um. You know I interview a lot of folks, a lot of docs that are part of programs or directors or what have you not unlike you, not unlike yourself, but you know, in the private pay um sector and talking about treatment and talking about care and um, but I'll also interview a lot of community folks and folks that are providing, you know, peer support, care, those kinds of things, um, uh, local to our community and and outside of it as well. One of the things that I always ask about is you know, what is it that? What can we do to bring these two worlds a little closer together? Where we make you want to make the cool stuff accessible to everybody, where we make, you know, ultimately, residential treatment, where it's needed, affordable and accessible to everyone, quality care, you know, not just stripped away. You know poorly funded or barely funded, or you know, an insurance game. Where they're, you know, bare bones in staff, they're bamboes in programming, they're giving you a partial product.
Speaker 1:Ultimately, in my opinion, to turn and look at a center like yours, even though it's not residential, it's a community resource center and it's one that's firing on every cylinder. You know what I mean. Like it's you've got you've got art classes, you got people teaching yoga and you've got you're making the recovery, you're making a stronger recovery manager at sober, at sober homes, or you know recovery residences in the community and you've got people that are at. You know the accessibility, people who are in the neighborhood know you're there, know, know what you do, might get invited, might find their way to recovery and, more importantly, you know you ultimately act as this resource that does what I do for my clients, which is direct them and find the quickest path to care. And find the quickest path to care and that is one of the largest barriers that you run into in communities is people who can't afford a consultant or some kind of high-dollar treatment or don't have insurance or don't have any resources financially whatsoever, and they can come to you and in 24 to 48 hours they can find their way to residential treatment.
Speaker 1:That you've eliminated a barrier that, for the rest of the world, I think is very real and quite substantial, and that you know that. That, to me, is miraculous. Um, what do you see, uh, for the future? What is the like? Let's put you know, I don't want to age you prematurely, but let's let's put 10 years on you, and, and let's say that you're still in this role what are the developments, not only in your community, Senator, but in the greater recovery and treatment community? What are the, what are the developments you'd like to see in bridging this gap that I'm talking about, and how do you think we're going to do it if we are?
Speaker 2:So there there's a couple of ways, and some of these things were already in the middle of working on and they're you know, they're longer term projects.
Speaker 2:But I think one of the things that I've noticed in my time in the industry is that when I One of the things that I've noticed in my time in the industry is that when I, when I first started working in this field, the treatment centers were primarily owned by families or they were very small companies. They were not owned by, I'll just say, corporate firms. Yes, most all of them are owned by private equity now and they talk a good game in terms of what they're, what they're trying to accomplish, but the reality is they're trying to accomplish an EBITDA that is outstanding so that they can then turn around and sell a group of centers to a larger equity firm, then turn around and sell a group of centers to a larger equity firm. They're not interested in patient outcomes, they're not interested in staff development, they're not interested in some of the things that I was really fortunate to get to work in Right and are critical in my view and yours, I know too to quality care.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so so one of the things that, uh, um, that really helped me as I entered the field. So when I started working at a, at a private facility, I um, I was, you know, a little over a year sober at the time and I was, I was reevaluating life and I wanted to do something that was more meaningful than real estate development, which is what I'd spent my previous career doing, and, um, and so what I said I was, I was doing some volunteer work at this place and they finally said, well, I know, we know you're looking for something to do. Why don't you come to work here? And I said, well, I don't, I'm not qualified, I don't have a counseling degree, I don't you know. I mean, like I don't, I don't have any letters. Like I went to school, I communicate. And they were like that's OK, we have our own internal training program. It's actually better that you come here green, untrained, untrained, because now we can teach you, we don't have to un, you don't have to unlearn techniques and things that don't, that aren't effective and don't work Right. So they had an internal training program that was remarkable and I learned from the best clinicians.
Speaker 2:Um, well, all that stuff has gone away because all the programs if you look at who's I'll just say who's who, and whether it's Asheville or the Carolina, any of the Carolinas, tennessee, our region, whatever most of the people who are, who are exceptional in their, in their work. They started and they worked. They spent some time in a residential treatment center where they learned a whole lot and then they took that. Well, people aren't learning much there anymore because they're not being trained. They're literally not there.
Speaker 2:The companies aren't reinvesting in them, they're not teaching them any new skills, techniques, whatever. So anyway, long story short is I want to start a training institute for clinicians, because what I know is the current ownership structure of treatment centers is not going to allow that to happen on their dime. They just won't do it. They're not going to spend money improving their staff from a skills perspective because they would rather just hire as cheap as they can, and then, as soon as you want to make more money, they'll let you go and they'll hire somebody else, and that's just. That's just the name.
Speaker 1:Right, right, um, I mean I you see that a lot across the board where you know the the pay scale person can make more in private practice than they can. Megan, you know working a lot more hours with a lot more responsibility, a lot more paperwork and you get a lot of this. You know attrition that happens in the therapeutic sector or privates and suddenly but it's like what you say you never get that 10-year clinician right that's been there since the beginning or since however long, and themselves have served hundreds of people, walked them through their recovery journey at the stage of care that they serve and then can turn around and supervise and pass that wisdom on. I think that even when a person really wants to do well, they want to. You know they want to develop themselves, they want to get better at their job, they want to do those things. As a result of it not being sponsored or it not being available in very concerted ways, you get a hodgepodge that lacks continuity. So the person's done this one-off training and this one over here and a CE event over here and these kinds of things, but they don't know quite how to put it together and it doesn't translate itself to real lived experience doing the work and I think we see that in the adolescent spectrum of treatment.
Speaker 1:I think we see it certainly in young adults. I see it a little less in older adults, because you tend to find those people serving older adults. They are older adults and they've got some experience behind them. But you see these things and what happens is that treatment struggles with moving the needle. I mean, I just had an interview about all this before, and if you can't move the needle for someone because you're not observing boundaries or setting limits or doing some aspect of the job that sounds nuanced but is critical to the role that you play in a person's recovery journey recovery journey you know you get a recovery community that's not as prepared to sustain their recovery, to pass that magic on, to share their own light and be a part of a community that's holding each other accountable. I mean, you know it's the ripple effect, right? I love this. You've already done it with the recovery managers, right? The house managers.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of our proof. You know what I mean. It's like hey, this works here, so let's do the same thing for clinicians that work at all these local centers and, and they're, they're really great people, they're entry-level clinicians, they, they, they have the same heart as you do, as I do, as we.
Speaker 2:You know, we go into this field to help others and then they get and it's real different because they don't learn any skills and it's they learn that it's all about insurance billing and that it's all about this or that, and it's like wait, a minute, this is not why I started doing this. So what we want to do is we want to harness that passion that they have to help others and get them in front of the people who can teach them. Like you said before, we lose access to that. We'll call it that ancient wisdom that came from before. People who who know how to help people in that kind of a setting. You know, move on, pass away, retire and become unwilling to participate. We want to create a training institute where we can work with entry-level clinicians and beyond and help people work towards licensure, give them really good training that's consistent, and we're trying to set it up with a funding stream that will actually not cost them anything, funding stream that will actually not cost them anything.
Speaker 2:Because when we do that is a barrier. So, if you so, in Tennessee the license for the license you go after is is called LADAC. It's a license for alcohol and drug abuse counselor. Well, it can be really expensive to get that because you're having to pay supervision hours, you're having to, you know, you're having to take trainings that might cost a hundred bucks and you got to take a lot of them. And if you know anything about entry-level clinicians and even those who've been in residential treatment centers for a couple of years, they're, they're living on poverty wages anyway, they're. They get hired in at 13 bucks an hour and off that school bill.
Speaker 2:Yeah and yeah, and so they're making 13, 15, maybe $17 an hour and they're doing I mean, that takes all of that just to feed themselves, much less their, their families, if they have them. And so if we can say, hey, we've got funding for you, we want you know, we want you, we would train you, so we're, I think. So I think we got a pretty good strategy. We just got some buttoning up to do and we're going to apply for a pretty large grant that will allow us to do this work and behavioral health, continuum of care and thus outcomes, and so, whether it's opioid abatement funding that you know, that is now available in all the different states, and so we're we're looking at some different opportunities for funding to do that. But, yeah, we want to, we want to improve outcomes and and we want to improve people's lives and their and, honestly, their ability to earn a good wage, and sometimes they just need some education that they don't have the money for.
Speaker 1:So we want a little extra, a little, a little nudge.
Speaker 2:Yep, so, uh. So that's one thing, and then the other piece that we're looking at and it's uh, is doing some, some more significant stuff with recovery, housing, um, and and trying to figure out you know how to improve that landscape, because there's there's opportunity there to improve that landscape, because there's opportunity there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's opportunity there. That's a nice way of saying it.
Speaker 2:It can be a real difficult thing the different recovery residences and so just trying to look at how we can help positively impact that landscape doing some different stuff there.
Speaker 1:So Well, I'll tell you, webster, we, you know you and I hadn't talked in a little while, and you know you you landed there pretty solidly and I spent enough time running around visiting programs and things like that. I don't get to visit as many resources such as yours as I would like to, because I really enjoy them and I think that they're the backbone of any change that's going to happen in the world. Honestly, I'm going to get down there and I want to see what you've got going on.
Speaker 1:I'm going to bring the whole crew and we're just going to come have a good time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, anybody who's listening. Man, if you want to come see something, that's really really cool and I would invite you to come over and visit us, spend a day here, half a day or an hour, whatever time you got, come and spend it with us.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to come down there and we're going to spend a little time Maybe we'll grab a little lunch or something like that and I want to talk about these ideas with you. They're cool, they've got traction, they've got legs, and you know any way that we can help. I can help, I'd love to do it, but I sure do appreciate you. I appreciate the work, the time just to be on the show and share this wonderful news. I really, really do, and I look forward to getting down there and seeing you. This has been Mental Health Matters on WPBN 1037, the Voice of Asheville, webster Bailey. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, todd, appreciate you.
Speaker 2:We'll be with you next time. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found the illegal. I found um Outro Music Bye. I feel so lonely and lost in here. I need to find my way home.
Speaker 1:I feel so lonely and lost in here.
Speaker 2:I need to find my way home. Find my way home.