While efforts to encourage those in recovery and minimize harm to those actively using, are ongoing in the county, a major hurdle exists in the view many hold of those working through substance abuse issues.

Family Services of Warren County hopes to change that through outreach efforts and community events organized through its P.H.O.E.N.I.X. Project. P.H.O.E.N.I.X is an acronym for program for harm reduction, outreach and education in a nonjudgmental individualized experience

“Over the last four years, we’ve developed a different way of looking at recovery,” Executive Director Kim Holt said. “We need a change in how people look at recovery. We’ve developed the P.H.O.E.N.I.X. Project to get people to look at Family Services differently, because we also cover mental health issues.”

“What we kind of fell into over time… The true need is for some community engagement and community-wide effort,” Director of Substance Abuse Services Andrew Cauley said. “We kept seeing these barriers, The stigma, it’s pretty pronounced here.”

Cauley noted the organization has been working on outreach to combat biases about those in recovery.

“We’re fortunate to have some grant funding to have some community engagement,” he said. “To get the community to come to our events and interact with people in recovery.”

One area where those in recovery face challenges is finding and maintaining work.

“How do we get employers to look at it differently?” Holt asked. “Addiction doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care about age or status.”

She said the program plans to move forward with efforts to better inform the public about recovery, citing a recent session with Warren General Hospital staff.

“The next step of the program is education,” Holt said. “We would love to have the opportunity to go into public and have a conversation where they’re at, even if it’s just 15 minutes. We would love to have the opportunity to go out and just speak to people.”

She said the organization is open to providing presentations to organizations and employers if they’re interested.

“If we don’t have opportunities for people to interact and get people talking, we can’t break the cycle,” Holt said.