A faith-based organization that connects people who use drugs with off-site treatment and other services is expanding its footprint in Kensington with a resource center at Allegheny and Frankford avenues.
The new Pennsylvania Adult and Teen Challenge (PAATC) center is open Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with plans to eventually offer nighttime hours. The building has a lounge space where people can walk in for snacks and water and a hallway full of offices for meetings with recovery specialists.
“We want to get you off the street,” said PAATC spokesperson Shawn Ryan. “Let’s talk about options to get outta here, whether that’s treatment or whether that’s housing or whatever, we can’t keep doing this. We want to try to get you out of this lifestyle.”
PAATC is a statewide organization that refers people to both 30-day drug rehabilitation and 90-day residential recovery programs. The longer-term programs require participation in religious activities, including Bible study and attending chapel services, Ryan said. Civil rights groups and addiction physicians have voiced concern about sending people to facilities that preach conversion as addiction treatment and may not provide evidence-based care.
People who are not interested in Christian recovery options can get connected to a secular program through PAATC, Ryan said, adding that the organization’s faith-based 90-day programs do provide medication-assisted treatment such as Suboxone. Those options include a residential farm in Rehrersburg PA called “God’s Mountain.”
PAATC already staffs an office on Kensington Avenue that is part of the Rock Ministries church campus. The City of Philadelphia has asked Rock Ministries to expand its “chaplain squad” to recruit people who use drugs into the church, and connect them to treatment through PAATC and other providers such as U-Turn for Christ in Lebanon, Pennsylvania and America’s Keswick in Whiting, New Jersey.
In a press release about the new Frankford Avenue center, police deputy commissioner Pedro Rosario said PAATC is “answering the call to serve our community in an effort to make a positive difference.”
“Together, through our combined efforts, the hope is meaningful change will happen and bring about a brighter future in Kensington,” Rosario said in the statement.
City and state officials, grassroots activists and neighborhood services providers were at the grand opening event. State Sen. Christine Tartaglione, who was in attendance, said in the press release that she believes PAATC will be able to help people achieve long-term recovery.
“I have repeatedly witnessed the lack of investment in an area that so desperately needs it,” she said. “It marks a significant shift.”
Meanwhile, city leadership has moved to restrict certain organizations providing immediate help to people who use drugs including Savage Sisters, which lost its lease due to political pressures and Prevention Point, which had to downsize its syringe exchange program and is now facing a challenge from the zoning board.
PAATC is donation-funded and does not receive financial support from the city, according to its representatives.
Materials provided at PAATC’s Thursday ribbon cutting event included stories about people living with addiction who had been saved by “God’s healing hand.”
Nabori Rosario, outreach navigator at the new PAATC resource center who is herself in recovery, said she took the job because of its Christian mission.
“We talk about the mental and the physical, but we definitely need to talk about the spiritual,” she said. “For me it’s always been Jesus, 10 toes down, and it’s always been productive.”
She also said getting people “away from Philadelphia where people are not just jumping on a bus or a train to go back, is key.”
“It’s like a little threshold,” she said. “You know you’re not in Philly anymore, and all that mountain and trees and the lakes that are up there … they’re not coming back. They love it. The fact that they get an opportunity to work up there and build a life outside Philadelphia is amazing.”
Rosario hopes to launch a ladies’ night at PAATC, where women can come for support and showers. She used to help staff a similar event at Prevention Point, a secular organization on Kensington Avenue that occurs each Wednesday at 5:30 p.m.
There are already showers and sets of clean clothes for women available at the new resource center.
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