Plymouth County Outreach Receives AmeriCorps Grant from P.A.A.R.I. to Staff Fulltime Program Coordinator and Four Part-Time Recovery Coaches throughout the County
For Immediate Release
October 25, 2017
Plymouth County – As part of the continued development and expansion of Plymouth County Outreach (PCO), a 12-Chief of Police Advisory Board was recently formed to help guide this county collaborative. PCO began almost a year ago as an extension of smaller, pilot substance use disorder (SUDs) programs first started in Plymouth, Scituate, Brockton and East Bridgewater over the past several years.
Scituate’s South Shore Peer Recovery began in 2014 as a local coalition of volunteers, much like EB HOPE did in 2011. In 2015, Plymouth’s Project Outreach and East Bridgewater’s EB HOPE Drop-In Center began proactive SUDs outreach on a regional basis as a result of grass-root efforts to combat the opioid crisis that has hit the South Shore especially hard. Brockton’s Champion Plan launched in February of 2016, similar to PAARI’s original Gloucester model as an access point to treatment for those walking into the police station.
Prior to PCO, all 27 Plymouth County communities, led by their Police Chiefs working in conjunction with the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office and Sheriff’s Department Drug Task Force, had been involved in some level of substance use disorder related outreach programs.
In December 2016, Plymouth County Outreach was formed to bring the smaller pilot programs together into a county-wide model. Each of the 27 Plymouth County municipalities’ Chiefs of Police and Bridgewater State University Police signed memorandums of agreements to collaborate on this first of its kind, county based model between all the police departments in conjunction with four of the county’s hospitals, treatment and recovery organizations, local coalitions, faith-based community, local boards of health and other local government agencies.
Key stakeholders include Signature Healthcare in Brockton, Beth Israel Deaconess-Plymouth, South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Southcoast Health’s Tobey Hospital in Wareham, Learn to Cope, High Point Treatment Center, Brockton Area Multi Services Inc (BAMSI), Gosnold Treatment Center, Ad Care, Spectrum Healthcare, NorCap, Teen Challenge of Brockton, local coalitions, and a host of other expert treatment and recovery organization partners.
Each PCO police department made a commitment to share overdose survivor information in real time through an information sharing system for the sole purpose of helping those survivors gain opportunities to access treatment and recovery programs.
Each department also committed to provide plainclothes police officers to visit homes of recent overdoses in the county, alongside Recovery Coaches, licensed clinicians and social workers, offering the overdose survivors and their family members peer support, treatment and recovery resources, harm reduction strategies, as well as assisting persons in accessing treatment if needed.
PCO supports the law enforcement information sharing system, local coalitions, the regional Drop-In Centers and Champion Plan. The Chiefs Advisory Board includes Abington Police Chief David Majenski, East Bridgewater Police Chief Scott Allen, Hingham Police Chief Glenn Olsson, Rockland Police Chief John Llewellyn, Scituate Police Chief Michael Stewart, Brockton Police Lt Richard Linehan, Carver Police Chief Marc Duphily, Hanover Police Chief Walter Sweeney, Pembroke Police Chief Richard Wall, Plymouth Police Chief Michael Botieri, Middleboro Police Chief Joseph Perkins and Wareham Police Chief Kevin Walsh.
District Attorney Timothy Cruz and Sheriff Joseph McDonald have been instrumental in leading the Plymouth County Drug Task Force, created in 2015 to help bring law enforcement together with the medical community and substance abuse experts to track trends in the opiate epidemic within the county.
PAARI and AmeriCorps Grant
PCO recently became eligible for the groundbreaking new statewide PAARI and AmeriCorps program, which launched earlier this month. The program combines the power of service with the power of the recovery community and the power of police-based referral programs, placing 25 AmeriCorps members in host police department sites across Massachusetts.
P.A.A.R.I. AmeriCorps members will build the capacity of law enforcement programs and assist those suffering from substance use disorders by connecting them to treatment and recovery services that divert them from the criminal justice system. All PCO member police departments were selected to receive the AmeriCorps grant from P.A.A.R.I. to bring on AmeriCorps members to prevent overdose deaths and provide vital resources to community members with substance use disorders.
P.A.A.R.I. received a three-year grant from the Massachusetts Service Alliance and the Corporation for National and Community Service to launch this first-of-its-kind program that will place 25 AmeriCorps members into service at host police department sites across Massachusetts, assisting with local police-led addiction and recovery programs in light of the growing opioid epidemic.
“P.A.A.R.I.’s mission is to provide resources to help law enforcement agencies combat the opioid epidemic and this innovative program will add significant capacity to our law enforcement partners and utilize service as a solution to address critical community needs,” said P.A.A.R.I. Executive Director Allie Hunter McDade. “We are thrilled that Plymouth County Outreach has signed on as a partner for the inaugural year of the program.”
PCO Program Coordinator and 4 Recovery Coaches to be hosted at 4 Police Departments
Chief Scott Allen and Chief Michael Botieri are pleased to welcome Jocelyn Cabral as the new PCO Coordinator. Jocelyn will have office space at both Plymouth and East Bridgewater Police Stations. She will be responsible for working with and helping to manage the county-wide program. In addition, there will be four, part-time Recovery Coaches who will provide outreach, support, and referrals to treatment for individuals with substance use disorders and their families and also be based in police stations.
Part time Recovery Coach Shawn Salisbury will be based at the East Bridgewater Police Station, Kurt Gerold at the Hull Police Station, Tracey Drimer at the Hingham Police Station and Sloane Fernez at the Plymouth Police Station. Each recently completed a Recovery Coach Academy, offered through the Department of Public Health’s (DPH) Bureau of Substance Addiction Services (BSAS), and will use his or her training and lived experience to connect with and support active substance use disorder individuals, those who have recently overdosed, those seeking treatment, and those in early recovery.
Each of the Recovery Coaches and PCO Program Coordinator are incredibly passionate about helping others and excited to help launch this new project.
About AmeriCorps:
AmeriCorps is a civil society program that engages adults in public service work with a goal of helping others and meeting critical needs in the community. Members commit to full-time or part-time positions offered by a network of nonprofit community organizations and public agencies to fulfill assignments in the fields of education, public safety, healthcare, and environmental protection. There are more than 75,000 Americans in service each year.
About P.A.A.R.I.:
The Police Assisted Addiction & Recovery Initiative (P.A.A.R.I.) is a 501c3 nonprofit with a mission to help law enforcement agencies establish pre-arrest programs that create immediate and stigma-free entry points to treatment and recovery programs. P.A.A.R.I. works across sectors to provide training, coaching, and support; program models, policies and procedures, and templates; seed grants; connections to over 300 vetted treatment centers; a network of like-minded law enforcement agencies; a unified voice with media and legislators; and capacity building through AmeriCorps. P.A.A.R.I. is free to join and open to any law enforcement agency that believes in treatment over arrest and views addiction as a disease not a crime. Since June 2015, P.A.A.R.I. has launched more than 320 law enforcement programs in 31 states, distributed 10,000 4mg doses of life-saving nasal naloxone, and helped over 12,000 people into treatment.
Media Contact: PAARI Allie Hunter McDade
Phone: 508-212-9831
Email: allie@paariusa.org