Massive federal budget cuts to programs that serve low-income Americans are beginning to take effect. What does that look like for one addiction recovery coach in Connecticut?
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Laura Tillman to discuss her article, “This CT recovery coach could lose his job to federal cuts. What will happen to his clients?” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Laura’s story here.
WSHU: Hello, Laura, tell us about Kerry Bilda, the recovery coach in southeastern Connecticut. Why did you find it necessary to tell us his story?
LT: When I first got interested in telling Kerry Bilda’s story, I was interested in how it might reveal just what's going on with the opioid crisis in southeastern Connecticut. He's a recovery coach, which means he's helping people who are enrolled in medication-assisted treatment for opioids to get the other tools and pieces of their lives supported, things like struggles with housing or filling a prescription or a doctor's appointment trip that could derail their recovery without that help. So I just thought initially, you know, this would be a really interesting way to learn a lot of different stories through the eyes of someone who's traveling all over the cities and towns in southeastern Connecticut and get a sense of, you know, where are we with the opioid crisis in southeastern Connecticut? What's the status? What's going on?
But then, over the past eight months, since the Trump administration took office, there have been a number of federal agencies and grants and other sources of funding that have been cut or are going to be cut in the future, and among those is the grant funding that funds Kerry Bilda’s position. So the story kind of moved from being more about, you know, let's take a look at what's going on with the opioid crisis, to trying to understand what could potentially be lost if these types of positions go away in the future.
WSHU: Now, you actually went out with him to see clients. As he went to see clients, what did you learn? It's a $140,000 grant that pays for his services, right?
LT: That pays for him and one other recovery coach, yes.
WSHU: Okay, so it's a very small amount of money, but in a much bigger budget, we're going to see a lot of cuts on the federal side. So, going out with him, how did that inform your thinking about what's actually going on here? Because you actually got to see real people.
LT: Yeah. So it was really interesting, because every day is different for Kerry. I went out with him three different times over the course of a few months, and some of the kinds of things that I saw him do were seemingly very simple, like giving someone a ride to work. You know, someone who has been in recovery for a while needs a ride to work because it's raining out. Usually, he rides his bike to work, and Kerry, you know, gives him the ride, since he has time that day to do that. That might seem very basic, but it's sort of like, you know, for someone who may have burned a lot of bridges over the course of their substance abuse, they may really not have anyone else to go to for a ride. And while, you know, maybe the cost of an Uber one time or a taxi one time might not seem huge, it does really affect someone who's living close to the poverty line. And then if you lose that job, then sort of all of the elements of your life can start to derail, from the job to losing your housing to potentially, you know, going back to using.
WSHU: Now we have a really bad opioid crisis. Where do we stand now? It seems the numbers are showing that rates have declined over the past few years. So why is it necessary to continue funding positions like these?
LT: It's been three years of decline. I think that those numbers, I wouldn't say they're misleading, but I think that something to keep in mind when you look at those numbers is that 2021 which was the height was a really extraordinary year, 2020, and 2021, in terms of the fact that, you know, we had not only fentanyl that was flooding the drug supply, but also we had the covid pandemic. And one of the riskiest things you can do if you're using opioids is to use them alone. A lot of people found themselves alone during that period of time and didn't have as much access to support. So I would say while the numbers are coming down, they're coming down from a really extraordinary number that we saw a few years ago. So we're not in the clear yet.
I think that the numbers are still, you know, much, much higher than they were 10, 20 years ago. And there's a real sense among advocates as well that, you know, these numbers are not acceptable, that the people are dying who don't need to die, and also that, I think, the thing you'll hear over and over in the advocacy community is that you can't recover from opioid use if you're dead. So that statistic of just how many people are dying is very important, because you know whether those people continue to use or not, they'll never get to the recovery phase if we lose them. So I think in terms of saying exactly where we are in this crisis, I think it is tricky; we're definitely on a positive trajectory right now. In terms of the numbers consistently coming down, a lot of that is owed to the availability of naloxone, which is the overdose reversal drug. The state has put a lot of money into making that available in pharmacies and vending machines. There are pilots for making that available at, you know, different places like libraries or like Harm Reduction Centers. So that is key. But I think that part of what interested me about this story is kind of what comes next. You know, we have people surviving opioid use. But then what does it mean to rebuild your life? What does it mean to really live after and live a good life? And how much do we as a country or as a state want to invest in helping people to do that? So the recovery coach position is kind of that position that speaks to that, you know, next step in someone's life.
WSHU: Interesting quote from representative Cristin McCarthy Vahey. She's a Democrat from Fairfield and co-chair of the Public Health Committee. She said to you that progress isn't free. How much is the state putting into this? If you know the federal money is not coming in.
LT: Yeah, I mean, it's a question that the state is going to have to answer, because, you know, these grants come through the state. Currently, the grant that funds many of these recovery coach positions, for example, comes through the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, a state agency. Still, that money comes primarily from federal funding.
There's also this other pot of money that the state has access to, which is the opioid settlement funds. Those funds are winnings from lawsuits that the state has joined, and we have more than $600 million worth of money to spend, some of which has already been spent or has been earmarked for different projects. But there are also some concerns about whether that money will remain as it is now, kind of an independent pot of money to make grants for new things, or whether it will be subsumed into filling holes in the budget for things that the state used to be able to pay for with federal funding. So that's a question moving forward, I think that we're going to have to watch carefully is as these different budget holes, you know, with Medicaid and snap become bigger and bigger, are we going to start changing our laws so that we're able to draw out from that funding and draw away from the kind of value added programs that that funding once was used for, and instead just use it to pay for things that the state was already paying for some other way. So there are going to be a lot of difficult decisions to make in the years ahead.
WSHU: And one of them has to do with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. You talked with Representative Joe Courtney (D-CT-2), who represents that part of Connecticut, and he's saying that these cuts could be devastating for his district.
LT: Yeah, there's been some positive economic momentum in that part of the state, driven by jobs at Electric Boat. There's also been this positive momentum toward recovery efforts and helping people enroll in medication-assisted treatment. A lot of people who are enrolled in that kind of treatment, which is a very effective treatment for opioid use, are enrolled through Medicaid. Medicaid is paying for them to use those programs and take those medications. So that is a real concern, and I think that part of it is the fact that there are sort of compounding factors that we're going to be looking at, whether it's, you know, the fact that there's going to be less food assistance, there's going to be less federal support for food pantries, for food banks. There's going to be less money for Medicaid. There's going to be, you know, less money for things like housing grants. So people who are living on the margins, people who are living these kinds of fragile, stable lives, are some of the people that Kerry Bilda is helping to rebuild their lives in this painstaking kind of way, and are some of the people who may be most at risk of really seeing that derailed? I think that's a concern in southeastern Connecticut, and I think it's a concern, you know, all across the state, really.
WSHU: And in the meantime, what's Bilda's future?
LT: Well, he's a few years away from retirement, and, you know, a lot of these cuts are kind of rolling out slowly over the course of a few years. So I think it remains to be seen whether A, Connecticut finds a way to keep this funding going, and B, whether maybe he'll retire, you know, sort of in line with when some of this money goes away. But, you know, hopefully for the next few years, he's going to keep getting to do his work. But it was very impressive to see what he does. I mean, I think the example that I spoke to, you know, giving someone a ride, is just a very small piece of what he's doing day to day. He's really this kind of glue that's helping people keep their lives together, that's making sure that they're able to get the things that they need. And it was, it was moving to talk with some of his clients and hear you know how much he's meant to them in their lives.
