The Ripple Effect of BCCS Care

The Ripple Effect of BCCS Care

By Adar Wells, BCCS Director of Clinical Services

I remember my first day working at BCCS. I pulled into the parking lot at 5:30 in the morning and saw the clients waiting. I was flabbergasted to see people I recognized, people from the companies that provide goods and services to my home.

You never know who is impacted by addiction, they could be someone’s next-door neighbor or the parent of someone’s child’s playmate. They are fellow human beings in our community, and they deserve help.

Many who come into BCCS for the first time arrive at the lowest point of their lives. They come in crisis, and we see them walk out with peace and hope.

At times, we are invigorated to see a transformation. A formerly homeless person holding down a job. A recovering addict no longer engaged in dangerous or inappropriate activity. In our Perinatal Program, we see a child reunited with a mother, and a mother reunited with her family.

Celebrating big successes and incremental steps
Those are the big successes. But often, the victories achieved at BCCS are small ones. Recovery is one day at a time, one step at a time – sometimes forward, sometimes back. When it’s forward, we feel invigorated. We want to see the client continue that progress, to move on to the next step.

But sustainable recovery comes at its own pace. We guide and support our clients through small steps that we hope will lead to bigger victories. The scope of the challenges in our community – and the setbacks that are an inevitable part of behavioral health counseling – can be disheartening.

To keep going, we tell ourselves, even on the most frustrating days, to celebrate those incremental steps.

Work that ripples through the community
We also remind ourselves that our work has a ripple effect. Helping people manage addiction and other behavioral health problems has a positive impact on the circles of people around each client. We treat the client, but the healing reaches into the community.

Those little victories help get people off the street, address multiple social challenges, reconcile families, and strengthen the community.

Those victories are like pebbles dropped into the water. The pebble is small, but the ripples radiate outward. When we add up the pebbles, those concentric circles spread through the community.

Courage and compassion
Let me tell you about some very special people: the BCCS counselors. Our counselors are free of bias and full of compassion. They’ve chosen a field that many people might shy away from.

Day after day, they change and save lives. They possess the courage to face one monster after another: crack cocaine, the opioid crisis, the emotional health effects of the pandemic, fentanyl and now Xylazine (known as “tranq”).

When I see my fellow counselors, I see heroes standing in the shadow of monsters, dropping pebbles into the water. The ripples spread, making our community safer, healthier and stronger.

BCCS is always looking for more heroes; learn about career and volunteer opportunities, or how to support their work.