What Impact Did We Have?
100% of our participants remained in their Recovery Services while they were engaged with Dayspring Foundation's Care Navigators.
In 2022, we provided Care Navigation and Peer Recovery Support Services to over 520 people and distributed over $240,000 in Health-Related Social Needs (HRSN) aid.
By far, the largest number of requests for assistance was in the housing arena, while the most money went to assist with treatment services (over $63,000) followed by housing assistance (over $62,000).
Transportation assistance was over $33,000 (with 90% being assistance in auto repair). We also distributed over $31,000 for utility support (preventing utilities from being shut off or assisting in getting them turned back on). And we also distributed over $20,000 towards medication support in 2022.
As you can see, the Health-Related Social Needs (HRSN) of people in the recovery process is high. In meeting these needs, we are addressing major components of long-term recovery: we help people in crisis, and we help build up recovery capital. Crisis in early recovery is a major factor in relapse and overdose. And building up people’s recovery capital helps them become more empowered and connected to the community.
Is Anyone Better Off?We find this to be the most important question of our evaluation process, so much so we offer a small gift card for individuals who participate in a follow-up survey. Roughly 20% of individuals participate. The graph above shows engagement in care at intake and then at 90 days (darker purple). While all are involved in some type of recovery services (as this is part of our eligibility criteria), engagement with other mental health services and even primary care goes up in the 90 days following enrollment in our services.
Employment
Perhaps the most interesting outcome is how significantly our services increase employment outcomes. At intake, only 21% of the individuals we serve are employed. Within 90 days, 57% report continued work, working in a new job, or gaining an increase in hours or pay, with 12% obtaining employer-based health insurance. Currently, we do not provide any employment counseling, so we believe these outcomes prove that to work, people need basic resources and hope. We are delighted we can help individuals become self-supporting with financial assistance, often in early recovery.
Reduction in Substance Use
Many individuals are referred to us within the first 1-4 weeks of stopping or trying to stop substances. Therefore, at intake, only about 20% are still using. We find it significant that at 90 days, that number drops to 10%, with half of those reporting stopping their main substance of concern and the other half reporting using less.
The self-identified substances of concern for people at intake were Methamphetamine (22%), Alcohol (17%), Fentanyl (16%), Heroin (13%), Opioid Prescriptions (10%), and Cocaine (8%).
Freedom from Incarceration
We work with many individuals who have had a recent arrest or incarceration. At follow-up, 0% had an incarceration OR arrest. This makes sense to us; when someone has access to resources, including housing, they are far less likely to participate in activities that may lead to arrest. In addition, while we don’t pay court fines, as we don’t believe in criminalizing substance use, we know that assisting with basic needs supports individuals in meeting probation requirements, helping them avoid re-incarceration.
Overdose Reduction
It goes without saying that the darkest outcome of Substance Use Disorder as of late, both locally and nationally, is the high death toll. At intake, over 50% of respondents report having experienced an overdose at some point. 31% of all our respondents have experienced two or more overdoses. At follow-up, only 5% of individuals experienced an overdose, and no overdose deaths of our participants have been reported.
CLICK the PDF to download the 2022 Social Impact Infographic
Social impact