For the last few years, a team made up of mostly volunteers at a center in Skowhegan has offered a slew of programs aimed at supporting people on the path to recovery.
The center, dubbed the Recovery & Opioid Addiction Resources, or the ROAR center for short, has offered everything from 12-step programs for addiction and individual recovery coaching to career counseling and nutrition classes.
Now, thanks to a $500,000 grant from the Maine Recovery Council, Kennebec Behavioral Health plans to expand the programming and hire staff at the center at 34 High St., which will soon be renamed the Somerset County Recovery Support Center.
“We’re going to be very program-rich and offer all pathways to recovery, and, plus, address the eight dimensions of wellness,” said Stacy Austin, who runs the center as a recovery coach coordinator with Kennebec Behavioral Health.
Austin, who has been in her position for four years and also works with the nonprofit Healthy Acadia and Maine Alliance for Recovery Coaching, said Somerset County is the last Maine county out of the state’s 16 to have such a grant-funded recovery center.
Kennebec Behavioral Health, a Waterville-based mental and behavioral health provider that also operates seven clinics in central Maine, is expecting to finalize the contract for the $500,000 grant by the end of September, according to Austin.
The funding comes from the Maine Recovery Council, a 15-member board that directs the disbursement of opioid settlement funds from the Maine Recovery Fund to address the opioid crisis across Maine.
In total, Maine expects to receive more than $230 million through 2038 as a result of litigation against companies responsible for the opioid epidemic. Half of that amount is dedicated to the state recovery fund, while 30% of all settlement funds are to be directly paid to eligible counties and municipalities and the remaining 20% to the attorney general’s office.
Austin said the grant Kennebec Behavioral Health received is to support expanding the center’s hours to 40 hours per week, up from about 27, and hiring three to four staff members. Hours are to be determined, she said, as is whether the staff will be full- or part-time.
“Some of these volunteers that I have are phenomenal,” Austin said. “Some hopefully will apply for positions here, and others will stay on as volunteers.”
Attendance has increased “exponentially” since the center first started offering programs through ROAR, Austin said. Currently, the center averages about 150 visits per month.
On a recent Thursday afternoon, for example, about 25 people had come in that day for career counseling, recovery coaching and Reiki sessions, Austin said.
“Some days we are really, really busy,” she said.
But finding funding has been an ongoing effort, Austin said. Kennebec Behavioral Health has footed the bill for the ROAR Recovery Center so far with smaller grants and donations. The organization does not bill insurance for the programs it offers there, Austin said.
“For the last few years, that’s what we’ve been doing, looking for different grant funding,” Austin said. “And we were having a very hard time trying to get the money going.”
Austin said the center is now pursuing another grant from the state’s Office of Behavioral Health, which she said has already accepted a proposal and is working through the details.
The recovery center grew from efforts that began seven years ago, when Pat McKenzie, chief clinical development officer for Kennebec Behavioral Health, partnered with members of the community to organize a rally, create a pamphlet of resources and train a group of recovery coaches, Austin said. An action plan, various partnerships and grants led to the eventual opening of the ROAR center in Skowhegan.
The soon-to-be-expanded recovery center is among a patchwork of programs in Somerset County aimed at supporting recovery from opioid addiction. Among those, the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office and Somerset Public Health, a division of Redington-Fairview General Hospital, have been working in a partnership so that a care coordinator can work directly with sheriff’s deputies and connect people with resources.
In 2023, fatal overdoses in Maine declined 16%, marking the first year-to-year reduction in fatalities since 2018, according to the Maine Drug Data Hub. Overdose deaths in the state peaked in 2022 at 723; 607 were reported in 2023.
Fatal overdoses dropped again in 2024, to 490, state data show. That came amid a sharp decrease nationwide, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fatal overdoses in Somerset County have also been trending down. State data show 35 were reported in 2022, 29 in 2023, 22 in 2024 and four in the first seven months of 2025.
Experts have pointed to various reasons for the decrease in fatalities from drug overdoses, including the increased availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone, known commonly by the brand name Narcan, and expanded treatment and recovery programs.
