What Is It?
The Freedom Life Program helps individuals with criminal records, including those who have been incarcerated, as they work to rebuild their lives and transition back into the community. Many people in our neighborhoods face challenges from their past and lack the support they need to break free from harmful cycles that affect not only themselves but also their families and the community. Freedom Life helps provide the spiritual, mental, medical, relational, and practical support necessary to make this transition successful.
By partnering with local organizations and the community, Freedom Life offers the resources and guidance that can help justice-involved individuals turn the difficulties of their past into opportunities for a brighter, more hopeful future.
Partners
The partners for this program include:
Mitchell County Government |
Mitchell County Health Department |
Mitchell-Yancey Prevention and Recovery Task Force |
Mitchell County Department of Social Services |
Mitchell County Sheriff's Department |
PATH (Partners Aligned Toward Health) |
Mitchell County cooperative Extension |
Hope House |
Celebrate Recovery |
Mountain Community Health Partnership |
Progress in 2022-2023
At the moment, Mitchell County Commissioners have decided to discontinue this idea and move in another direction.
Other activities we have been doing to address the use of the Opioid Settlement Funds are:
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Planned and carried out the “Community Learning Process” phase inviting community members to get involved, members that have a live experience with substance use, to tell their story! This could include family members, current or previous users, service providers on the frontlines, neighbors, those working within organizations providing direct services to the community. The individuals that tell their story, or stories, remain anonymous and the story form is available in both English and Spanish This will generate actionable insights and ideas based on the stories told for making recommendations on addressing substance use in our counties.
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Completed the Mitchell County Opioid Planning Needs Assessment, compiling existing data related to substance use (particularly opioid use) in Mitchell County. This is a support tool to help with decision making around the use of local opioid settlement funds. It should be considered alongside the learnings and recommendations from the concurrent community learning process around opioid and substance use in Mitchell County, as well as other local information-gathering work.
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Held three strategic planning workshops to steer the direction we might need to go with the funds: “Building Capacity”, “Refocusing Advocacy and Education Efforts”, and “Empowering Individuals”.
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Building Capacity: In these workshop, participants moved from analyzing and thinking about all the creative things that could be done to making decisions about what will be done.
Participants determined major accomplishments for year one for each strategic direction, then they created a quarterly calendar that established when
accomplishments will be completed. Finally, the group created 90-day implementation steps for each accomplishment scheduled to begin in the next quarter -
Refocusing Advocacy and Education Efforts: In this workshop, participants were asked to take a realistic look at why this vision is not in place today. Participants were encourages to look beyond the obvious and below the surface at the underlying obstacles to our vision.
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Empowering Individuals: In this workshop, participants were asked to reflect on their shared, practical vision and the blocks and barriers that were identified in the previous two sessions. Participants were asked to brainstorm substantial actions - actions designed to address obstacles head-on, whether through elimination, mitigation of their impact, or by actively implementing steps to bring the vision to life.
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Hosted a special meeting called by the Mitchell County Commissioners, encouraging as many members of the Advisory Group to attend since there is time for public comment, there is power in numbers, and this is a great opportunity for us to show up as community partners with aligned efforts. The room was filled with highly committed individuals and professionals to support their decision making process. Considering that recent interaction AND your strategic direction event held, including Advocacy Efforts. As a result of this meeting, many of the Commissioners named prevention and work with youth as their priorities for this funding. Whether that speaks to our vision for this funding or not, this is a great chance to provide information and awareness to people with financial decision making power