CEO Matthew Page-Shelton and Police Chief Scott McNamara are pleased to announce that Front Line and the Methuen Police Department will receive a $550,000 grant over three years to establish a community response team and community support center in Methuen to bolster behavioral health services to those in need within the community.
The Justice Mental Health Collaborative Partnership grant from the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance will fund a partnership between Front Line and Methuen Police which will facilitate the creation of a community response team and community support center.
The Community Response Team will include a masters-level behavioral health clinician, as well as peer support specialists, who will provide direct support to community members experiencing mental health crises.
The Community Support Center will provide Methuen Police a place where officers can refer individuals who are suffering from substance use or other behavioral health challenges for follow up care that includes post-crisis outreach, and supports that include peer support, benefits support, social determinants support, and therapy.
The goal of both programs is to effectively address the substance use epidemic and mental health crisis while reducing the number of behavioral health calls that are responded to by law enforcement; to decrease unnecessary emergency room visits and arrests due to behavioral health issues; and increase connections to outpatient supports to those who are experiencing crisis.
“Providing assistance during behavioral health crises and comprehensive follow up care are a far better way to address behavioral health issues than either arrests or involuntary emergency room visits, and we are committed to providing exactly those services to members of the Methuen community,” said CEO Shelton. “Front Line has a proven track record of success in this area, and we look forward to getting to work in Methuen.”
The first year of the partnership will include reaching out and working with community leaders, the police department, and community members to better understand the needs of the community. The Community Support Center should be in operation by October of 2024.
“Front Line proved what it is capable of as an agency with its work in neighboring Middlesex County, and we could not be more excited to put the organization’s experience to work here in Methuen,” said Chief McNamara. “This new partnership will greatly enhance our response to behavioral health issues, and will create a more effective, comprehensive strategy for facing our nation and region’s mental health crisis. These are not issues that we can just arrest our way out of.”
“This is an important step in helping our community address the issues of mental health and addiction, which plague cities across the country,” said Mayor Neil Perry. “We will begin to introduce this and other measures identified by our Mental Health Task Force in the near future and evaluate their impact over time.”
Up until this Spring, Front Line worked directly with the Billerica, Chelmsford, Dracut, Tewksbury and Tyngsborough Police Departments to provide direct connections to holistic, trauma-informed behavioral health and substance use disorder resources.
Those departments have now formed their own independent Behavioral Health Unit Police Collaborative to continue providing those services within their communities, while Front Line has amicably evolved into an independent company aiming to assist other police/first responders with clinical services, training and support for deflection and outreach programs on a national scale.
While working with its original five agencies from 2019 to 2022, Front Line clinicians responded in-person to 960 calls for service involving a mental health or substance-use concern, and member departments referred 5,548 incidents to Front Line clinicians for follow up due to a mental health or substance use concern, according to a report Front Line prepared for the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance.
During that time, specially trained officers from member departments and Front Line co-responders diverted 2,160 individuals from a revolving door cycle of involuntary emergency room visits, instead connecting those individuals with outpatient treatment options and follow up care.
Also from 2019 to 2022, Front Line co-responders and officers from member departments diverted individuals from criminal custody 1,878 times, connecting individuals to mental health and substance-use resources and follow-up care in situations where probable cause for an arrest existed.
Data collected by Front Line and reported to the Bureau of Justice Assistance also shows that over 91% of individuals who participated in recovery-based treatment with Front Line in 2021 did not commit additional crimes while they were in treatment, and that over 72% of those individuals continued to show no recidivism after completing treatment.
To learn more about Front Line, visit: http://frontlinesvs.com/.