Recovery Catalyst

Copper Shores supports GLRC’s new John Kivela Center 

Copper Shores Community Health Foundation has committed $300,000 to Great Lakes Recovery Centers (GLRC) for the overhaul of the John Kivela Center in Negaunee. The improvements allow the GLRC team to focus on the integration of whole-person care for their clients, including women from the Copper Country.

“Clients will experience a whole-person care approach that will include the availability of timely, on-site directed care,” GLRC CEO Greg Toutant said. “Clients will be able to get help identifying issues around the social determinants of health including housing, vocational, transportation and employment needs.”

GLRC provides community resources and services for people recovering from addiction and substance abuse, such as the Ripple Recovery Residents for women in L’Anse. The John Kivela Center services include a continuum of substance use disorder programming, mental health services, child and adolescent care, integrated medical services, re-entry case management, recovery housing, community based prevention, and foster care recruitment and retention for women in recovery and their children. Services are provided by certified counselors and licensed professionals across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. 

For many people struggling with addiction in the Copper Country, the resources and tools to get help are far away and require many resources to obtain. With the changes made to the John Kivela Center, these services will be streamlined into one location relatively near home. Though the center is outside the foundation’s service area, GLRC helps over 50 Copper Country women a year with recovery services.

“We are excited and blessed to offer a state of the art, dignified, treatment environment that brings about a whole-person care approach to better meet the multiple real-world needs that people have,” said Toutant. “To be able to do this under one roof helps with efficiency and effectiveness of our treatment modalities coming together to form a treatment team dedicated to serving all those in need.”

Like many small and rural communities across the country, the Copper Country can often get overlooked for funding opportunities and investment projects. This perpetuates the systems that push people into poverty, where they are unable to attain the resources to break cyclical trauma like alcoholism and drug abuse. The Great Lakes Recovery Centers team helps people go into recovery and maintain sobriety. 

GLRC’s efforts to provide well rounded recovery services model a larger change in health services. As the understanding of addiction and substance abuse advances, so too does the efficacy of recovery methods. GLRC's holistic approach reflects the understanding that addiction is a mental health issue influenced by various life factors, necessitating comprehensive care from multiple perspectives.

“This is a very substantial shift in how substance abuse is being modeled,” Copper Shores President/CEO Kevin Store said. “We’re proud to be part of that process and help it be successful.”

This is the latest example in a healthy partnership between Copper Shores and Great Lakes Recovery Centers. In February of 2020, Copper Shores helped fund the Ripple Recovery Residence in L’Anse, a GLRC home for women recovering from addiction and substance abuse. GLRC has also partnered with Copper Shores for #GivingTuesday, raising $14,601.63 to date. 

GLRC has produced incredible results with their services for decades, helping individuals get on their feet, find stability in jobs and housing, and set people on the right path to long-term health. That includes many people who have received services locally or at their other locations across the Upper Peninsula. Learn more about GLRC by visiting greatlakesrecovery.org.