SPARC gives update on first year of county partnership

SPARC reported out on its first year of operations as a partner of the county at the Burke County Opioid Committee’s meeting on Sept. 15, highlighting successes and reflecting on the families helped along the way after receiving $390,000 from the county late last year.

What sets SPARC (Supporting People’s Access to Reliable Care) apart is its family-centered treatment (FCT), visiting families in-home for regular check-ins and overall comprehensive care that supports the entire family unit.

One specific case FCT and FCT-R Supervisor Faren Tillery highlighted was a father in active meth use, who kept avoiding phone calls from SPARC. Finally, one of the SPARC team members decided to just head out instead of trying to schedule a visit.

When she arrived, the father said he was just leaving to get Mountain Dew from the store. She offered to go and get it instead, if he’d speak to her when she returned.

She spent two hours talking with the father after bringing back a case of the soda, explaining that he told her things he’d never told anyone else.

“Him and mom have been actively engaged since,” said Tillery, “and actually asked the practitioner yesterday, ‘Can you bring a Mountain Dew every time you come?’ So, we’re ordering some cases of Mountain Dew to have in the office to take a Mountain Dew out to him every time. Whatever works.”

SPARC received the first family-centered treatment recovery (FCT-R) referral on Oct. 3, 2025. Since they started accepting families, they’ve received 46 referrals — 29 of which were in 2026 — with 13 still active, 12 families discharged after finishing the program, and eight declining services entirely, while the others were referred to other services such as FCT or other programs entirely.

Tillery explained that even families that were referred to a higher level of care returned by choice when they were approved for a lower level of care.

Opioid funds filtered to SPARC’s FCT-R program, which uses questionnaires, cooperation evaluations, regular visits, and mental health self-help methods to guide families out of substance abuse.

SPARC practitioners who provide FCT-R complete 14 recovery-focused training modules in addition to the 18 required for standard FCT certification.

According to SPARC, a total of 107 Burke County residents have participated in FCT-R.

“FCT and FCT-R require entire family buy-in, and sometimes they just want us to fix a kid,” explained Tillery when asked what she believed caused the eight to decline.

Some of those families, said Vice President of Operations Shanda Woody, eventually “loop back around” and open up to the program.

About 73% of SPARC’s referrals come through the Department of Juvenile Justice, 17% come from DSS, and 3% actually come from the school systems, with the remaining 6% coming from other agencies.

Although 40% of families are referred due to a child’s THC use (the psychoactive component of marijuana), 39% trace back to the family’s history of opioid use.

“This is the number I am just blown away by every time Faren and Shanda and I meet,” said Teri Herrmann, senior vice president of strategy and development. “For 2026, 85% of the drug screens that we have administered have come back negative for substances. These are weekly drug screens. They are random.”

As Tillery walked in the door to the meeting, she said she had heard from her staff that a client had passed her drug screen, got a job SPARC had helped her apply for, and was actively looking for a car.

The county has already committed $365,000 toward SPARC for this fiscal year.