Kim Savery, director of community programs for Hilltown Community Health Center, is looking for a new home for Hilltown Community Center programs currently housed at 9 Russell Rd., Huntington.
Reminder Publishing photo by Amy Porter
HUNTINGTON — The Hilltown Community Center social service programs at 9 Russell Rd. are moving to different locations, in anticipation of the sale of the building where they have been housed for several decades.
Kim Savery, director of community programs for the Hilltown Community Health Center, said the building’s landlord Robert Walker, who has owned the 100-year-old building for the past 10 years, has been tremendously supportive of the programs, but expenses have also been going up tremendously.
In addition, the Community Development Block Grant, which has supported several of the programs housed in the building, including domestic violence outreach and family support, was effectively cut in half this past year. The nonprofit organization received the same amount of money as usual, but was told to stretch it over two years. The programs that depend on the block grant had received the same level of annual funding for the past 15 years.
Savery said over the years, people in Russell, Huntington, Chester and Blandford have reaped multiple benefits from the block grant programs. Programs offered in the building at 9 Russell Rd. have included community health workers and family support, both of which have home visit components; domestic violence support; the Hilltown Family Center, a drop-in support group for families with young children; and health access, which helps connect people to health insurance.
“We’re choosing to see this as an opportunity,” Savery said. She said none of the programs are closing, and there has been no interruption in services. The community health workers have already moved into the organization’s Huntington and Worthington health centers, as have the health access workers.
“One of the things we’ve talked about is the shift in our thinking to the model of whole person health care. We put the community health worker in the center of that care,” Savery said, helping to coordinate access to the different departments and programs offered by the Hilltown Community Health Center.
The Hilltown Family Center has yet to find a new home. Savery said the space it occupies at 9 Russell Rd. was built for the program using block grant funds, back when the building was owned by the now-closed Hampshire Community Action Commission.
One of the locations being considered as a new home of the Hilltown Family Center is one or two classrooms at the former Russell Elementary School, which now houses the Russell-Montgomery Police Department but has several unused rooms available. Savery said they are discussing the possibility with the town, but no decisions have been made.
“Our team has been very involved,” she said, and has explored ideas across the Southern Hilltowns. She said ideally, the center would find a home in Huntington, Chester or Russell.
Savery said the programs at the Hilltown Community Center were going full force during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and receiving an infusion of support in the way of funding on the federal level, which has now stopped. She said all of the Hilltown community programs have always been free to the public.
“We had a lot of walk-in business in this building,” she said, due to its central location in downtown Huntington. She said the programs such as Health Access that have moved to the health centers will welcome people to drop in to see them, even if they are not patients.
She said the community health workers program, which started in 2006, was originally located in the health centers.
Savery emphasized that all of the programs will continue with no interruption.
“We just need to find the right space,” she said. “Having a hub has been exceptional, not only for us, but for the community. While we may not replicate this space, we would like to maintain that quality of service,” Savery said.
