Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. As mentioned, my name is Chris Kelly – I’m the new Executive Director at LICADD, the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. I worked at LICADD from 2018 to 2022 and have worked in the field for almost 10 years.
My message today is simply about families. Both the families who have been afflicted by substance use and mental health, but also the families who haven’t been. I can say I have been on both sides of that fence. Up until 15 years ago, my family was relatively healthy as it pertained to both. Then, mental health and addiction struck my house and changed our lives forever.
I use this experience to talk about the journey of the family who is currently afflicted vs the potential impact of the family who is not currently afflicted and who is hopefully never afflicted. For the families who are affected, I like to call it the journey to recovery. Access to treatment, a critical and maybe most important step, do all communities on Long Island have the awareness and access to treatment…family support pre and during treatment, support and recovery services coming out of treatment, ongoing family support, housing for the individual post-treatment, sober housing, vocational support and recovery-friendly workplaces. I think when you look at it as a journey, you start to see where the gaps are. We have many great treatment options on Long Island, awareness and access are many times the obstacle, family support services pre, during, then post treatment are critical for the family unit and each individual, and I’m not sure we address and highlight the family support ecosystem as much as we should, and then coming out of treatment…ongoing support and recovery services are critical. How do give an individual a solid chance to sustain their sobriety? Housing usually comes up as a major roadblock and tough to sustain, vocational and career prospects or one’s daily purpose or sense of fulfillment, and transportation. These are the pieces that seem to come up, time and time again, that really disrupt recovery and absolutely disproportionately affect low-income neighborhoods. Two organizations, for example, who I think are doing a masterful job and fill a really unique role with these particular gaps, are the No Matter What Foundation and Gino Macchio Foundation. Both of their models fill two major gaps in the journey to recovery and they could have an even greater impact with more exposure and if we could bring them to all neighborhoods…
For the family and community leader who has not been afflicted, and hopefully never is, how we get them in the room. A lot of times in this space, we joke that we’re talking to almost the same people daily. It’s not just people or organizations who are in our space though, I think we have to look at initiatives and organizations that have nothing to do with substance use. Why? It’s to touch the families and community leaders who aren’t afflicted because there is absolute value in having those families as ambassadors and resources…that’s the missing link. The larger we can make that circle, the more effective these dollars will be. Creating a circle of awareness of non-afflicted families and community leaders will positively impact the crisis response investment in communities across Long Island. What would that look like exactly? I wish I had the exact answer for you… By no means I’m suggesting give the money to these non-service-providing organizations but something like investing in service-providing organizations in our space whose business models are set up to include and support outside organizations… Maybe it’s an organization like the No Matter Foundation bringing their role, message and mission to communities across Suffolk County to really chip away at the access and sober living pieces, and maybe it’s the Gino Macchio Foundation working with more communities and businesses to help fill the major gaps in post-treatment support services with the help of other agencies.
It’s solidifying the journey to recovery, every gap and every hole, and creating a community of families and community leaders who aren’t afflicted who can absolutely mobilize awareness and identify needs so that more individuals and families who maybe wouldn’t have been identified and supported are helped if the time comes.
Thank you all for your time and thanks for all you do.
God bless.