PLYMOUTH, MA JUNE 15, 2023 – The Plymouth County HUB is excited to announce the second annual HUB convening to be held on Wednesday, June 21st, from 12:30 – 2:30 p.m. EST on the Plymouth waterfront. This event will welcome police departments and community providers from across all of Plymouth County and the Quincy District Court Region of Norfolk County. The Plymouth County HUB is a project of the Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative (PAARI).
At the event, HUB partners will hear from Child and Family Services about the history of and data surrounding the co-responder model along with a panel discussion led by six co-response clinicians; followed by time to network with one another and visit resource tables for service providers that offer housing, mental health, and substance use services. The convening will also feature guest speaker Dan Cortez as he discusses how the Chelsea HUB went from being the first United States HUB in 2015 to reaching their 1,000 HUB situation in May 2023.
The HUB continues to break down silos and build relationships between police departments and community providers. Highlighting this collaboration, Deputy Chief Wendy Lapierre of Pembroke PD (MA) states, “The Pembroke Police Department has been part of the Plymouth County HUB since its inception in 2020. We have partnered with numerous organizations to help assist our most vulnerable residents. Most notably, the HUB has brought us closer to agencies within our own community. The HUB has helped us identify our growing senior citizen population and helped us build a strong partnership with our Council on Aging (COA). We work extremely well with the COA and have the HUB to thank for opening the lines of communication between our departments.”
Through the amazing collaboration of police departments and community providers, the HUB helps connect at-risk individuals and families in the community to the resources and services they need to stabilize from a difficult situation. There have been 361 HUB situations since the launch of the Plymouth County HUB in 2020 and 226 of the situations have closed with the individual or family being connected to community resources and supports and decreasing their risk level, with an additional 39 being informed of services they can access. The HUB continues to notice that housing, mental health, and substance misuse are the top three risk factors individuals and families are experiencing in the community and this has remained constant since 2020, with the prevalence of each shifting.
“The Hub has made significant impacts on the lives of individuals and families in our community by building relationships between service providers and first responders,” says Charlette Tarsi, Plymouth County HUB Manager. “I’m excited the Hub is able to offer this networking opportunity in-person to learn from each other and continue to build best practices to help those in our community who need it most.”
In the case of rain, the event will be held at Plymouth Town Library at the same date and time.
Written, by Isabella Nowak
###
About Plymouth County HUB: In January of 2020, South Shore Health awarded a grant to the Police Assisted Addiction and Recovery Initiative (PAARI) and Plymouth County Outreach (PCO) to start the Plymouth County HUB. Understanding the comorbidity of substance use, the need to increase behavioral health services was crucial. Mirroring the HUB model that originated in Saskatchewan Canada, the Plymouth County HUB became the first county wide HUB in the United States.
The HUB is a group of law enforcement agencies, healthcare providers, housing specialists, elder and youth services, substance use resources, domestic violence advocates, and many other community providers that come together to meet weekly on zoom. Through these expansive partnerships, the HUB addresses 27 risk factors an individual or family may be experiencing ranging from homelessness to mental health to suicidal ideations. Any community partner, including police officers, may present an individual or family that is at an acutely elevated risk and needs services in multiple areas, therefore one agency or department alone cannot mitigate the risk (this is known as a situation). The goal of the HUB is to connect organizations together in the meeting to solidify a plan of providing wrap-around services and intervene within 24-48 hours. Learn more at plymouthcountyhub.com.
About PAARI: The Police Assisted Addiction & Recovery Initiative (PAARI) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to help law enforcement agencies nationwide create non-arrest pathways to treatment and recovery. Founded alongside the groundbreaking Gloucester, Mass., Police Department Angel Initiative in June 2015, PAARI has been a driving force behind this rapidly expanding community policing movement. We provide technical assistance, strategic guidance, connection to training resources, and other capacity-building resources to more than 650 police departments in 40 states.
PAARI works with more than 130 law enforcement agencies in Massachusetts alone. PAARI and our law enforcement partners are working towards a collective vision where non-arrest diversion programs become a standard policing practice across the country, thereby reducing overdose deaths, expanding access to treatment, improving public safety, reducing crime, diverting people away from the criminal justice system, and increasing trust between law enforcement and their communities. Our programs and partners have saved tens of thousands of lives, changed police culture, and reshaped the national conversation about the opioid epidemic since its founding in June 2015. Learn more at paariusa.org.