Our Story
GR8 Day — Crossroads Addiction Recovery Support was incorporated in 2016 to help cover a gap in our health care system by providing addiction recovery support and services for those who have no means to pay for them. We are registered with the Canada Revenue Agency as a charitable organization:
- To coordinate health care and social support services for persons affected by substance abuse.
- To assist persons in coping with the affects of substance abuse by offering education and counselling and by establishing mutual support groups.
The impetus to set up GR8 Day came from our intimate involvement with the Crossroads: Centre for Personal Empowerment. Crossroads is a not for profit organization that helps people living with addiction or whose lives have been affected addiction. Crossroads operates with the client or benefits provider paying for their services. The demand for services from Crossroads by individuals who do not have the personal means or the assistance of benefits plans to obtain the help they need has been increasing steadily.
GR.8 Day will contract and partner, where appropriate, with Crossroads for services to allow GR8 Day to operate in the most cost effective way.
The Need in Our Community
Windsor-Essex County, like the rest of North America, is in the midst of an opioid epidemic. Both opioid prescription rates and opioid related deaths are higher in the Windsor-Essex County area than the provincial averages. Evidence increasingly reports that opioid drugs are being abused by younger and younger individuals.
Addictions treatment for all forms of substance abuse in the Windsor-Essex County area is in very high demand and the options are Limited. If a person seeking help doesn’t have employee benefits and/or financial or other resources, the situation is even more desperate. Drug replacement therapy using Methadone or Suboxone for an opiate addiction is available under OHM for those receiving social assistance, but not the specialized and regular counselling and support required in rebuilding a manageable life.
Best practices dictate that helping individuals address the issues and circumstances that trigger and fuel their active addiction is essential to staying in recovery. When people with substance abuse challenges reach that point in their lives where they are ready to reach out for help, it is critical that they can find the help that they need.
OUR VISION
GR8 Day is responding to an increasing demand for help from people in the Windsor / Essex community who trying to build and live a recovery from addiction. In particular, we provide access to counselling, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and general support to people and their families affected by substance abuse and addiction who have no personal means or benefit plans to provide this support. There is no public funding for these services.
The support that we provide focuses on the individual and their specific challenges. We help them make the changes needed in their lives to move past problematic ways of thinking and acting.
Background
We began our “We Can Help” program to assist these people in January of 2018. To date we have and/or continue to provide access to counselling, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and other support services to over 1100 clients.
To maximize the impact of the monies that we raise, we co-ordinate with the Crossroads: Centre for Personal Empowerment for the provision of professional services. These services include: client assessments, addictions counselling, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for clients who are on drug replacement therapy, codependency therapy for women and a relapse prevention group.
GR8 Day is a volunteer organization with no paid staff. We receive no government support. All funds raised with the exception of the very basic accounting and insurance costs go directly to providing services for our clients.
