As one of the largest organizations of its kind in the area, Western Arkansas Counseling and Guidance Center in Fort Smith has become a trusted resource for those seeking a new lease on life. Serving a six-county footprint and providing myriad services, the group makes a positive impact daily in the lives of the people it serves and the communities they call home.
Thanks to opioid settlement funds administrated through the Arkansas Opioid Recovery Partnership (ARORP), the organization is fortifying its services even more through the Horizon Renewal Center in Booneville. The facility is designed to help people for whom outpatient services aren’t moving the needle for their recovery.
“There’s always a need for somebody at that level of treatment for substance abuse, where they’re not making it at an outpatient level,” said Rusti Holwick, the organization’s chief executive officer. “They’re just not functioning well in their roles, be it work, family, society, whatever it is. They really need to be removed from their environment and immersed in treatment. We saw that there really was a need for that and we wanted to find a way to address that gap.”
The Arkansas Opioid Recovery Partnership is a joint initiative of the Association of Arkansas Counties and the Arkansas Municipal League. Formed to oversee and manage distribution of some of the funds received by the state through national lawsuit settlements related to the opioid crisis, ARORP represents a network of organizations committed to providing frontline community-based support to address the harm done by the opioid epidemic. Initiatives address gaps in local services and range from sober living and recovery programs to education and prevention efforts.
Western Arkansas Counseling and Guidance Center was approved for just under $739,000 in settlement funding for a five-year project to renovate and expand its Horizon Renewal Center, a voluntary, secure adult substance use disorder residential treatment facility.
“We had been looking to expand our co-occurring program into the residential service but we didn’t have any place to house as many people as we needed to,” said Graham Baty, Horizon Renewal Center’s program director. “We were able to purchase the old DHS building in Booneville which was right next door to our outpatient clinic that had been established there for the good part of 50 years. We used the ARORP funds to remodel that facility to make it suitable to house 24 clients.”
Joseph Lee, the organization’s chief financial officer, underscored how the help of ARORP in securing funding was essential in bringing the project into service more quickly. He said the availability of settlement dollars helped accelerate the project considerably over raising the funds through a traditional capital campaign.
“We had, roughly, about half a million dollars into the project ourselves,” he said. “This funding probably saved us about three to five years of fundraising.”
The value of the new facility is readily apparent to even the most casual of observers, but to people like Tye Brown, an advanced peer specialist with the Booneville location, Horizon Renewal Center represents something more substantial. Clean for three years this month, Brown was forced to leave his home in Fort Smith to receive treatment in Little Rock due to long wait lists at local facilities. He said the new center’s additional capacity provides an important comprehensive resource close to home for people who need it.
“When I was working on my own recovery, that was back in 2020 right before COVID caused all the shutdowns and everything,” he said. “Local treatment programs had wait times, like it was going to be, I think there was a four-month waiting period before I could get in here. For people that are struggling with addiction, it’s not a disease you just put on the back burner for four months and hope for the best.
“I went through treatment at a facility in Little Rock and it felt weird going to central Arkansas and staying there for over two months. The Guidance Center is handling that issues through this center, bridging that gap for people and giving them a local choice. They don’t have to go out of state or to the other side of the state just to get the help that they need. Plus, we’re not just a single stepping stone; we can be every stone along the way if they need it and if they’d like us to be.”
Learn More:
Arkansas Opioid Recovery Partnership
arorp.org
