'Unflinching Commitment' | At Spectrum Health Systems, Chuck Faris is driven to cure addictions and heal families
Charles J. Faris can still recall the keynote speaker at a substance abuse treatment conference he attended years ago.
The speaker was a nun and she said something Faris has learned to be true in his more than 40 years with the Worcester-based nonprofit Spectrum Health Systems: There is no mission without a margin.
“I’ve lived through times with Spectrum where we were living hand to mouth,” said Faris. “It’s hard for staff to stay focused on their jobs when they’re saying ‘Gee, is my paycheck going to be there next month?’”
The 61-year-old Leominster resident, who most refer to as Chuck, started working as a volunteer in the 1960s for Spectrum, then known as Challenge House and later, Spectrum House. It was one of the first therapeutic communities for substance abusers in the country. The field was new, and Faris recalled that some at the time viewed it as counter-cultural.
“I drove a vehicle, I cooked, did building maintenance, some counseling, whatever was needed,” Faris said. “I just kept coming back. Something steered me in that direction.”
He took the top spot as CEO and president 12 years ago, the classic example of climbing the business ladder. The job can be stressful, and Faris finds therapy in landscaping his yard after a long day.
While it faced its share of struggles in the past, Spectrum lives hand to mouth no longer. The nonprofit still has to think about its margin, which is about 6 percent in a good year, Faris said. But the company now has treatment facilities and programming in eight states, employs more than 1,200 and takes in $47 million in revenue.
Its expansion began in the 1990s and has continued under the leadership of Faris, who evaluates about a dozen sites each month. He has his eye on potential deals in Washington and Maine.
Mark Bilotta, the chairman of Spectrum’s board of directors, said he joined shortly after becoming CEO of the Colleges of Worcester Consortium. He wanted to see how an experienced CEO like Faris operated.
“What first impressed me about Chuck was his unflinching commitment to serving Spectrum’s clients,” Bilotta said. “Through these past few years, I’ve witnessed him skillfully guiding Spectrum to its national prominence, always with an eye on where the industry will be in three, or five, or even 10 years. He is an impressive, compassionate leader.”
Compassion for clients is key, Faris said.
“We empathize, we don’t sympathize,” he said.
The fact that 40 percent of his counselors are in recovery themselves helps with that approach.
Counselors must also be genuine and listen closely to their clients. He said drug and alcohol abusers are perceptive, and can sniff out integrity in others.
“The right staff is our biggest asset,” Faris said.
Faris has had nearly four decades to ruminate on the meaning of addiction.
Often, it starts with a person trying to mask his or her pain, and diminishing their self image along the way. Or it starts with pleasure-seeking behavior. Those who drank too much during college often slow down after graduating, but some find they cannot.
Faris has been receiving a lot of phone calls recently from parents who are pulling a son or daughter out of college because of a drug problem, often prescription painkillers.
For Spectrum, timing is everything. The earlier a person can enter treatment, the better chance they have for a sustained recovery.
Faris stays in touch with some former Spectrum patients - lawyers, politicians, business owners, health care workers and day laborers — who turned their lives around.
In the business of trying to wrest a person from the grip of drug or alcohol addiction, not everyone makes it. The victories are to be savored.
“If they don’t tell anybody that they’re in recovery, that they had an addiction problem one time, nobody would ever know it,” he said. “That’s really what it’s all about. Getting people back out there and being productive.”
Often times, addicts are parents.
To address that problem, Spectrum opened the Women & Children’s Center in Westborough in 2010.
Mothers are often afraid they will lose their children to the Department of Social Services if they enter treatment. So Spectrum lets the children stay with their mothers during treatment.
We want to see if we can have an impact on that generational cycle of addiction,” Faris said.
Faris also believes firmly in a treatment-first philosophy for those who are arrested with drugs.
“It speaks to us more as a society that we’re valuing the person rather than just sticking them away,” he said.
But lawmakers, the health care industry and the public in general have become more accepting of addiction treatment over the years, and some of the stricter drug laws have been repealed. The fact remains that a large number of incarcerated people are in jail for drugs.
“We’ve still got a ways to go,” Faris said.
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