When Mike Morgan began working at Marrakech, he told himself
it would be temporary. He had been laid
off from his previous position as a substance abuse counselor, and joined
Marrakech to pay the bills while he looked for a new job. But when an offer came around six months
later, Mike turned it down. “I wanted to
stay with Marrakech,” he says. “I had
fallen in love with the agency and the clients.”
Twenty years later, Mike’s career has
come full circle. He is the manager of
the Taking Initiative Center (TIC), a drop-in program for people struggling
with substance abuse and homelessness.
TIC is a collaboration between Marrakech, Easter Seals, and the APT
Foundation. The center serves people who
have been unsuccessful with other treatments and who are falling through the
cracks of the service system. “When I
worked as a substance abuse counselor, I always thought it was too bad that if
you weren’t perfect at sobriety and you relapsed you had to start over
somewhere else,” Mike explains. “One bad
test and a person could be out on the streets that day. What TIC does is a whole new concept. We really meet people where they’re at. Consumers don’t have to be clean to be
seeking help. We welcome people, and we
help keep their motivation moving forward.”
A True Partnership
The program depends on cooperation between staff members
from the three agencies. “I feel really
good about the team here,” Mike says.
“We don’t say ‘well, 2 out of the 3 of us have made this decision so
that’s what it is.’ We work
together. We hash things out when we
need to but we are all on the same page about where we’re going with consumers
and the program.”
That teamwork becomes even more important when staff are
faced with difficult cases. “There are
some people that will not reach recovery,” admits Mike. “It’s a challenge, to not be frustrated or
mad with someone because they’re not moving forward. We have to remember to be mad at the disease,
rather than the person. Just because
they have a disease, there’s no reason they should have their disease out in a
gutter somewhere.”
Those struggles make people’s successes at TIC all the more
meaningful. “We had a consumer who used
to sit in a parking lot, panhandling. We
hadn’t seen him in close to a year,” Mike says.
“Now, he has nine months clean and an apartment in West Haven. He came by to thank us for getting him into
treatment. One woman came here for
several years, yelling and screaming at me.
But eventually, maybe because I wasn’t yelling and screaming back, she
started to open up and trust me. Now she
has a job, she helps her son with homework.
Good stuff.”
Saving Resources, Saving Lives
TIC follows the harm reduction model, which focuses on
reducing risk in order to improve people’s well-being. “Harm reduction pays for itself,” Mike
explains. “People aren’t getting
arrested as much. They aren’t using the
ambulance or visiting the emergency room as much.” Like many harm reduction programs, TIC uses
practical, inexpensive interventions to reach out to consumers. “Some people come here to have lunch or do
laundry or just be out of the street.
That’s alright. Their case
managers know where to find them, they are not in crisis, and when they’re
ready, we’re here for them. We’re
helping them feel like a person again.”
Please consider
supporting Marrakech’s determination to meet people where they are at:
·
A $10 donation to Marrakech buys lunch for two
consumers at the Taking Initiative Center (TIC).
·
A $20 donation buys a warm blanket for a
consumer living on the streets or in a shelter.
·
A $25 donation buys a week’s worth of coffee at
the Taking Initiative Center (TIC).
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