Three grants to provide treatment, recovery support services . . .
Hamilton County has been awarded two state grants from the Department of Mental Health and Addictions as well as a federal grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance to help individuals in Hamilton County struggling with opioid abuse.
The federal grant is a two-year grant totaling $490,343. It runs through Sept. 30, 2020. The money is earmarked for the creation of Opioid Quick Response Teams (QRT).
Greer
“The QRTs will work with overdose patients that have been revived with Narcan,” said Monica Greer, Executive Director for the Hamilton County Council on Alcohol and Other Drugs. “They will visit their homes within 48-72 hours to check on the individual, identify needs and provide recovery support. The goal of the program is to get the patients into treatment.”
QRT members will also canvas communities, going door to door to provide opioid resources to the community. The QRT will consist of a law enforcement officer, firefighter and certified peer recovery coach.
“The recovery coach will be someone who is in recovery themselves,” Greer noted. “So, we’re hoping they’ll be more effective in encouraging patients to seek treatment. A lot of people in these situations want to get help, but when you are suffering from opioid addiction and going through withdrawals, it can be incredibly difficult to stick to the recovery program.”
Federal grant money will be used to pay staff as well as to purchase Narcan, provide prevention kits, and create school resource guides, pamphlets and brochures.
The two state grants, awarded by the Indiana Division of Mental Health and Addictions, provide $50,000 each for training QRT members in Westfield and Carmel. The grants run through April 30, 2019. The grants will create a Community Opioid Prevention Effort (COPE) coalition. Members will also compile program data and provide community mapping for areas with a high frequency of opioid abuse. The cities of Westfield and Carmel were selected for these grants because they already have health programs in place to build upon.
“These programs will be a great place to jump off from,” Greer said. “The quick response teams in these two cities have been working for a couple of months now, so we’ll be able to take what we’ve learned there and apply it throughout the County with the federal grant in the near future.”
Hamilton County first-responders administered 300 doses of Narcan in 2017 alone. Greer hopes these grants will help keep offenders out of jail and off the streets: “We don’t want to punish them for their behavior,” she said. “We want to get them the treatment they need. We want to save lives.”