Project Connect for substance use in the workplace
Project Connect for substance use in the workplace
Administered by a Local Peer Navigator from Recovery Centers of America
In response to the pressing problem of SUD in the workplace, Recovery Centers of America created Project Connect. Headed by RCA Peer Navigators, Project Connect is a service offered to employers to provide education, resources, and inspiration designed to keep your workforce healthy and productive at no extra cost.
The peer navigators have firsthand knowledge of recovery from substance use disorder, as well as the nature of high-stress professional environments. On the basis of their lived experience and extensive training, they will confidentially work with your employees and their family members to educate them on addiction, inform them of treatment options, provide resources and peer support, as well as steer them toward healthy, productive lives in recovery.
A solution provided by RCA Project Connect
The process is effectively multi-tiered but straightforward in practice. Once an employer and RCA begin working together, a Peer Navigator will collaborate with your leadership team to design a customized approach that best suits your organization’s strategic priorities as well as the interests of your workforce. Complimentary services include but are not limited to:
- Information on addiction & mental health treatment options
- Confidential phone support seven days a week
- Awareness campaigns
- Risk-free assessments
- Peer support
- Navigation into an appropriate level of care
How does Project Connect work?
Once you are introduced to your Project Connect Peer Navigator, you will be provided with direct contact information, which you can use to contact him confidentially any time by phone, email, or text. The Peer Navigator is an expert in the field available to help you and your organization in the following ways:
- To tell his story, in person or online, which will connect your employees to a message of strength and hope
- To conduct education sessions on SUD with executives, HR leaders, managers, and staff
- To offer strategies on how to change the conversation with employees and reduce stigma
- To provide information on treatment options and available resources
- To act as an ongoing support for specific situations relating to employees or their family members
- To allow all managers and employees continued access to them
- To participate in the employee onboarding process, so that new hires are aware of their services
- To make himself available for company meetings, off-sites and other appropriate venues for ongoing awareness and education
To contact a Project Connect
Peer Navigator, please fill out the form:
What are the benefits of the program?
By furnishing real community-based experts, with lived experience, who work alongside your team, Project Connect provides several benefits, including:
- Improving bottom line performance via increased workforce productivity and reliability, to help counteract the costs listed above
- Contributing to an employee culture wherein employee wellness is a priority
- Assisting in navigating employee benefits
- Creating the ability to engage in SUD, mental or behavioral health treatment options risk-free from an employment standpoint.
How is Project Connect different from Employee Assistance Programs (EAP)?
Project Connect is designed to work perfectly alongside your EAP. Most EAPs don’t currently offer peer support with lived experience, and peer support is the one tool that can help bridge the trust gap the prevents people from coming forward to ask for help. The Peer Navigators have been in similar situations as your employees, felt the same fears, harbored the same doubts, and has come through the other side to live a happy, productive life. And, since they are not paid by your organization and have no official contractual obligations to it, they aretruly independent and thus can offer a felt sense of safety and confidentiality.
