Providing Hope and Changing Lives
Catholic Charities Maine has more than 370 employees, who, along with hundreds of dedicated volunteers, serve tens of thousands of people across Maine each year in services that range from behavioral health to combating food insecurity.
For many, serving those in need is a passion. That is the case for Tom Farrington, the director of the St. Francis Recovery Center in Auburn, and Jenny Tarmey, the assistant director.
“It’s both agency and ministry, so it’s both a job and a calling,” says Tom. “I was in business for 20 years, so I did something right, but it didn’t do anything but seek to make money. Today, it’s not about money. Today, it’s about changing lives.”
“I love when I go to a meeting and I see a guy who has completed our program several months before and they show up and they’re still clean,” says Jenny. “You can see it in their eyes that they’re still making good choices.”
The St. Francis Recovery Center is a residential rehabilitation program for men struggling with substance use and other co-occurring use disorders. It has 28 beds, which are typically filled.
“We have 34 people on the wait list this week. We’re screening three to four more clients every day, so if I had 100 beds, it’s still not enough,” says Tom.
“When somebody dies while on the wait list, that’s kind of hard to see,” says Jenny.
The center receives referrals from Aroostook to York County. Referrals come from the correctional system, case managers, detox facilities, attorneys, and others.
While men are at St. Francis, they participate in clinical groups and attend Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings every day. They also meet individually with a counselor once a week.
“You come in on a Monday and you leave six Mondays later, but we can keep clients for up to 45 days,” says Jenny.
“Six weeks to some seems like a long time, like if you go on a vacation, six weeks would be great, but for many of our clients, six weeks is but a drop in the puddle of their life in which they’ve had so many years of missed opportunities, losses, trauma, and other things,” says Tom.
Tom says while people may think of the center as helping people to get sober, he sees that as the easy part.
“If I lock you in a room, feed you your meals, don’t let anybody else go near you, I’m confident that you won’t get high. But to teach them how to save themselves from themselves and their own choices, that’s been huge here,” says Tom.
“We all experience traumas. We all experience sadness and loss but being able to stay clean through that and learning how to live life on life’s terms, that’s what I like to be able to show to these guys,” says Jenny.
Both Jenny and Tom know firsthand about the challenges of substance abuse.
“I am a person in long-term recovery. I just celebrated 36 years clean and sober,” says Tom.
“I started here as a client in the outpatient program. I was a participant in the Androscoggin County drug court program because I had gotten myself into some legal trouble. It was 13 years ago,” says Jenny.
Tom was already in long-term recovery when he moved to Auburn in 2010. A car accident changed his outlook, and he was looking to start over. He says he decided to go back to school and enrolled at Central Maine Community College to study human services. He says it was his college advisor who suggested that he volunteer at the St. Francis Recovery Center. It led to a paid position as a residential advisor, someone who cleaned and kept an eye on things on weekends.
“I would come on Friday, 4 p.m. to midnight, go home, come back 8 a.m. to midnight, go home, come back the next day. I would get my 40 hours in between Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday and have the rest of the time for school,” he says.
Tom says he interviewed the then-director of St. Francis for a project he was working on, which resulted in her asking him if he ever considered serving in the clinical treatment side of the program. He had not, but he took a test for the first license level and passed. From there, he kept advancing in both his studies and his responsibilities at the center. He is now pursuing a graduate degree and is director of Catholic Charities Maine’s Behavioral Health Central Network.
“My development here was from entry level janitorial to clinical outpatient drug court, representing the agency out in the community, developing program material and curriculum, training staff, helping staff get license levels,” he says. “And today, my job is more about developing and growing the program, looking for opportunities to do that, reaching out in the communities and still making sure our clients are getting what they need.”
Jenny first came to know Tom when she was a client of St. Francis. She received outpatient services, which are no longer offered. She says, at the time, she had no desire to participate in the program. It was just a way to stay out of jail.
“They said that you have to go to five meetings a week, and you’ve got to do this, and you’ve got to do that, and I was like, ‘I’m just going to do what they tell me so I can get off this and go back and live my life.’ But, that’s not what happened for me,” she says. “When I saw the benefits of it, when I saw how much better I felt physically, when my parents trusted me, when my daughter could count on me, I started to like recovery. I became a group junkie. I would come to every meeting they would let me come to. I would go into meetings every single day, sometimes twice a day. I chased my recovery the way that I chased drugs.”
“It’s funny because she would show up to groups that she wasn’t even supposed to be in. She would just come because she knew we wouldn’t send her away,” says Tom.
Like Tom, Jenny first started working in a lower-level position at the center.
“There was an opening in the administrative office in the outpatient department. They told me I should apply, and I was very nervous to apply. I had drug trafficking felonies on my record, and I was worried that I wouldn’t qualify for the job, but they gave me the job and I was shocked,” she says.
The hiring proved to not only be a benefit to Jenny but to the center as well. In less than a year, Jenny received a promotion to an admin job with greater responsibilities. She then moved up to be program manager and is now assistant director.
“She is like a sponge: absorbs, absorbs, and absorbs, and then does it well,” says Tom.
Jenny says she now tries to use her experiences to help others.
“I will sit and talk with them about my journey. You know, if somebody comes in from drug court and has questions about drug court, I can tell them what it was like when I was in drug court,” she says. “I’m still very active in AA, and one of the meetings that clients attend is my home group, so I see them every week even outside of here. It’s showing them that I still continue to go to meetings after being sober for almost eight years. I continue to work on it every day.”
Tom and Jenny aren’t the only employees of the center who are in recovery, something for which Tom praises Catholic Charities Maine.
“I think one of the things we love here at Catholic Charities is when people are promoted from within,” says Tom. “Our clinical team during the week, most of them had other positions or were former clients, and they were able to put their lives together and be promoted up through the ranks.”
Tom and Jenny both describe the St. Francis community as being like a family.
“When I go on vacation, I miss the work a little bit, but I miss my coworkers because they make me laugh. When I’m hurting, they care,” says Tom. “If something happens, they’re the first ones there. They’re the first ones who step in. What do you need? Are you OK? To have that kind of environment is very unique.”
“We look out for each other,” says Jenny. “It’s like a home away from home.”
“Here, the environment is about treating clients, but it’s also about each of us getting to live our true, genuine self with our clients in a system that is meant for that. It’s not judgmental,” says Tom. “Here, it’s so much more than work because it’s also our recovery environment. It’s where we bring out our brokenness and put it all in a pot and it becomes a delicious meal. We have a past of brokenness, but together, we become a whole.”
Tom says in their work, they get to see a pretty dark side of humanity, but there are also shining lights, like Jenny. He says, although society may view them as having little value, each person matters.
“I’m convinced that we come in contact with somebody struggling with addiction every day of our lives. It could be a partner, a parent, a child, a grandchild, a sibling, a relative. It could be a neighbor,” he says. “Yet, we act surprised by the devastation that is tearing apart so many lives.”
He says he is grateful to be in a position where he can try to help.
“The last 15 years have given me an opportunity to change lives,” he says. “Thus, I changed my own life.”
