Craven County has a demonstrated history of investment and passion for recovery support at the local level. It is home to several organizations and individuals actively involved in meaningful work.
Discovery Work
We initiated our partnership with Craven County to gain a deeper understanding of their challenges and to facilitate meaningful discussions about potential solutions.
Craven County was selected as a pilot location for the Community Collaboratives in North Carolina thanks to a grant from NCDHHS and is estimated to receive $15.6 million over the next 18 years (thru 2040) and required that the funds be spent in specific ways.
Planning Together
The next step was to collaboratively create a strategic plan. The strategic plan aimed to maximize flexibility and adapt funding strategies to meet Craven's specific needs.
RAI facilitated and guided the County through this process, involving all stakeholders. They assessed current resources, examined the root causes of the crisis, identified gaps in care, and developed a plan to address the issues. The objective was to improve outcomes and foster a resilient community that can effectively tackle these challenges in the future.
Opioid Task Force and Strategic Plan
Finding Solutions: The Craven County Collaborative is Formed
The collaboration began with a small group of individuals dedicated to saving lives in their community. Three key benefits of this local partnership are that the members became more aware of ongoing efforts in the field, built trust among stakeholders, and continued to develop or strengthen their relationships with each other.
Additional benefits offered by the Craven County Collaborative include:
- Amplifying local recovery efforts by bringing community leaders and stakeholders together.
- Identifying gaps and effective solutions that are currently in place!
- Learning how to implement solutions that support a healthy recovery community model to save more lives.
Expanding the Collaborative from 1 to 9 Counties
The Craven County Collaborative has been expanded to include all nine counties in the ECC Council of Governments: Carteret, Craven, Duplin, Jones, Greene, Lenoir, Pamlico, Onslow, and Wayne counties.
The collaboration we are witnessing from neighboring counties is inspiring. We recognize that substance use doesn’t stop at county lines, it crosses them.
With the growth we are seeing in this meeting, we will invite more of our neighboring counties to the Regional Collaborative Meeting (click here to learn more)!
What began as a very small group has ballooned into an invitation list of 300. The meetings' format provides education on Substance Use topics the collaborative members have identified as important and relevant to the area.