Northampton DHHS Director of Prevention Taylor McAndrew
Reminder Publishing file photo
NORTHAMPTON — Thanks to a recent grant, the Northampton Department of Health and Human Services, in collaboration with Tapestry Health and Craig’s Doors, is set to expand harm reduction services.
Tapestry Health has been awarded a $150,000 grant from the Mosaic Opioid Recovery Partnership, funded by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Bureau of Substance Addiction Services and powered by RIZE Massachusetts Foundation.
With an additional $150,000 in matching funds — $50,000 each — from Amherst, Northampton and Easthampton, this funding will support expanded, community-led harm reduction initiatives to address the critical needs of individuals and communities affected by substance use and houselessness across Hampshire County.
Northampton DHHS Director of Prevention Taylor McAndrew told Reminder Publishing that the department has had a long, ongoing relationship with Tapestry due to its services being located downtown. But over the last few years, McAndrew explained there has been a growing overlap in community members utilizing their services as well as unhoused individuals looking for shelter support, which led to Craig’s Doors joining the collaboration.
“Also, Amherst and Hadley do not have their own harm reduction services, so Tapestry and Craig’s Doors are really servicing a lot of the same community members who are looking for harm reduction or treatment supports, while also trying to receive stable housing,” McAndrew said. “We know that it’s really hard to seek treatment or recovery paths when you don’t have your basic needs met so harm reduction and housing go hand in hand.”
Through this initiative, Tapestry Health’s Harm Reduction program will collaborate with Craig’s Doors to provide coordinated outreach in Amherst, Chester, Chesterfield, Cummington, Easthampton, Granby, Hadley, Hatfield, Huntington, Middlefield, Northampton, Plainfield, Southampton and Worthington.
These communities are part of a formal partnership under the city of Northampton DHHS Public Health Shared Services Collaborative, or HPHSSC, which streamlines public health efforts across participating municipalities. This collaboration will enhance support for houseless individuals and those with lived or living experience of substance use, with a focus on rural areas, to increase access to harm reduction resources, healthcare, housing and transportation services.
“The [HPHSSC] is a group of municipalities that have come together to leverage other forms of public health services so that can look like public health nursing, inspectional services, so that’s where the partnership between Northampton, Easthampton and Amherst city and town officials was rooted,” McAndrew said. “It’s a way to look at what communities have to offer and bring those services to the rest of the region. Some of the smaller more liberal communities don’t have the same amounts of settlement dollars coming in, but we know that community members are transient, and this was a way to leverage funds with community providers to bring services across the region.”
McAndrew added this funding making this collaboration’s expansion possible is something the RIZE Foundation encourages as it is better for municipalities to tackle these growing issues collaboratively as opposed to in their own silos.
Some of this funding is directly related to transportation through the purchasing of a new van that will allow Tapestry and Craig’s Doors staff to be able to move through each community, especially the more rural communities, and meeting people where they are for services. Also, part of the initiative is additional outreach hours and an expansion of harm reduction supplies.
“I think creating a trusting relationship is a huge, huge piece [of this work],” McAndrew said. “When people from Tapestry or Craig’s Doors are able to begin to have conversations with community members that might often have their guard up, or are maybe hesitant to take that first step in seeking services, going out into their own community and offering an ear to listen to what’s going on, or really asking what it is that they’re looking for and not making any assumptions, that is a really big first step in then continuing these services. A lot of time people can be hesitant and so relationship building is a big piece of this and so I think that is just as important as overcoming transportation barriers or expanding hours. The two are really equally important.”
McAndrew reiterated gratitude for the regional collaboration on harm reduction work and added that with this funding, the work between DHHS, Tapestry and Criag’s Doors, will hopefully provide some sort of ease with regard to the current challenges facing the region.
“I think we saw this as an opportunity to really support and bolster the work that they’re doing, knowing that it will also benefit our community members and the work that the division of community care in Hampshire Hope does,” McAndrew said. “We’re trying to do the most we can with the least we can and working regionally always seems to have a bigger impact especially I think in Western Mass.”
