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OnBoard Matching Event draws organizations, individuals (photos)

by | Dec 9, 2021 | In The News

Updated: Dec. 08, 2021, 6:57 a.m. | Published: Dec. 08, 2021, 6:57 a.m.
By The Republican Newsroom

SPRINGFIELD — The 2021 OnBoard Matching Event took place Tuesday, Dec. 7, at Valley Venture Mentors at 276 Bridge St.

OnBoard, which merged last month with United Way of Pioneer Valley, connects talented individuals with organizations seeking to increase diversity on their boards and committees.

United Way of Pioneer Valley helps matches connect, and offers training and mentoring support, to help ensure matches don’t just happen, but become fruitful partnerships.

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Noted author to speak about having opioid-addicted family members

Noted author to speak about having opioid-addicted family members

by | Dec 8, 2021 | In The News

[…] Jarrett J. Krosoczka, award-winning author of the young readers’ graphic novel “Hey, Kiddo,” knows well what it is to live with a parent’s addiction. The Hampshire HOPE Opioid Prevention Coalition and related organizations are presenting a virtual event featuring Krosoczka talking about growing up with a heroin-addicted mother and an absent birth father.

The December 14 event is free and open to all and will be presented from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Advance registration is required so a Zoom link can be emailed in advance of the presentation. The necessary registration form is available at: www.hampshirehope.org.

[…]

Hampshire HOPE is a regional opioid prevention coalition based in the Northampton Health Department. Joining Hampshire HOPE in presenting Krosoczka are the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office, the Northampton Recovery Center, the South Hadley Drug and Alcohol Prevention Coalition, the Northampton Prevention Coalition, the SPIFFY coalition and the Quaboag Hills Substance Use Alliance.

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Noted author to speak about having opioid-addicted family members

Northampton Recovery Center fighting addiction with unique approach

by | Nov 16, 2021 | In The News

by: 

Posted:  / Updated: 

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. (WWLP) – […] Drug addiction is very much an issue locally and across the state. The Northampton Recovery Center (NRC) is a peer driven community, just last month celebrating five years in Northampton.

There is a life after addiction. That’s what’s really important. The National Institute on Drug Abuse has reported large increases of in drug use since the beginning of the pandemic. Across the Commonwealth, the opioid related overdose death rate went up one percent in the first nine months of 2021.

The NRC is trying to change these statistics in western Massachusetts, with a peer to peer approach. Outreach Coordinator of NRC, Trevor Dayton, told 22News, “Peer to peer recovery embraces the community aspect of, embraces the fellowship aspect of recovery. Everything that happens here, happens because a community member wanted it to happen.”

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The Consortium Announces New Development Director

by | Nov 12, 2021 | In The News

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Kristel Applebee
Western Massachusetts Training Consortium
(413) 536-2401 x3041
kapplebee@wmtcinfo.org

The Consortium Announces New Development Director

Terrie Thompson is the Consortium’s New Director of Development

HOLYOKE, MA November 9, 2021 – The Consortium is excited to announce it has a new Director of Development, A. Terrie Thompson.

Terrie Thompson has joined the Consortium as the Director of Development with over 16 years of advocacy experience. She has worked in various capacities of service within corporate settings, non-profits, and human services in the Western Massachusetts area, including the cities of Springfield and Holyoke. She has most recently worked with the Springfield Department of Health and Human Services in a groundbreaking community engagement project for the local Springfield Community through the Office of Problem Gambling Prevention. In her new role as Director of Development, she will utilize her extensive advocacy and community engagement experience to lead the Consortium’s development efforts and support innovative community engagement to generate a balance of funding streams and sustain the organization’s partner communities in the long term. Throughout her career Terrie has been committed to advocating and working closely with marginalized communities to create social equity, inclusion, exercise personal choice, and help provide equal access to resources in the larger community. She looks forward to working collaboratively with the Consortium’s programs and communities.

In all areas of Terrie’s career, she has practiced honoring the unique experiences and needs of the communities she serves. Her approach helps those individuals and groups to be empowered by their own experiences so they may thrive where they live, work, eat, and play in a meaningful wayHer work continues to reflect her passionate commitment to social justice, equity, and community inclusion. She intimately understands the importance of this type of community work because of her own experiences with her son with disabilities, which has further fueled her passion for advocacy and equity…social justice.

The Consortium, founded in 1975, is a learning organization committed to creating conditions in which people who have faced marginalization, oppression, or otherwise felt invisible are better able to pursue their dreams and strengthen communities through voice, choice, and inclusion. This is supported by an organizational commitment to address systems of oppression and work toward undoing the harms they have caused. To learn more, visit their website at http://wmtcinfo.org/.

First peer-run respite opens as alternative to hospitalization for people in mental health distress

First peer-run respite opens as alternative to hospitalization for people in mental health distress

by | Nov 8, 2021 | In The News

by Taylor Knopf

NORTH CAROLINA – On a patio tucked behind an old brick two-story house, Susan Hart sat on a glider surrounded by lush green plants under the glow of string lights. She wondered aloud what it would have been like to check herself into a place like this instead of a psychiatric hospital 20 years ago.

This place, “Retreat @ the Plaza,” opened in Charlotte in early August and is run by Promise Resource Network. It’s designed to be an alternative to hospitalization for people experiencing mental health distress. It’s the first peer-run respite house in North Carolina, meaning it’s completely staffed by people who have experienced mental illness, psychiatric hospitalizations, homelessness, incarceration, substance use or a combination of these.

The peer-run respite facility is free to participants and is designed to be a completely voluntary alternative for people who would otherwise seek mental health crisis care through the emergency room and possibly be involuntarily committed to a hospital.

[…]

Peer-run respite centers were introduced in the United States in the 1990s, and Promise Resource Network’s respite is modeled after one in Massachusetts called Afiya. A peer-run respite center is a non-clinical, completely voluntary service operated by people with their own stories of mental health recovery, trauma, hospitalization, incarceration, substance use, homelessness or some combination of these.

A guest can stay at the respite house in Charlotte for up to 10 days, where one-on-one peer support is available 24/7, as well as access to all of PRN’s other classes and supports which are located next door.

“Because of its success in decreasing emergency and crisis need for services by 70 percent, there are now 40 respites in the country in 12 states,” Allen-Caraco said. “We’re 41.”

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It’s Not Just Britney

by | Nov 4, 2021 | In The News

The Cut

By  | July 2, 2021

[…] The day after Britney’s statement to an L.A. court last week, one heard around the world, I called up a psychiatric-survivor activist I’ve gotten to know, Caroline Mazel-Carlton. Mazel-Carlton, who’s also a rabbi-in-training, works for an organization that is revolutionizing mental-health care in western Massachusetts (and beyond), called the Wildflower Alliance. I asked her what she thinks of so many people suddenly rallying around psychiatric patients’ civil rights — or the rights of one patient, at least.

“To me, honestly, it’s just a relief,” Mazel-Carlton said. “Sometimes I even cry, to hear people finally saying, ‘That’s not right. That’s not right.’”

When we spoke, Mazel-Carlton seemed more focused on the actual activism of the day: This week, she and some colleagues testified to the Massachusetts legislature, speaking out against a proposed law that would expand forced psychiatry in their state. Euphemistically termed Assisted Outpatient Treatment or AOT, such laws have been adopted by 47 states over the last two decades. Such laws expand the state’s powers to make medical decisions for a person deemed incapacitated by virtue of insanity, for example, going beyond the time frame of a mandated psychiatric hold in a hospital, which traditionally would be for something like 72 hours. Instead, under such laws, a person who’s been released from the hospital, say, is now controlled and monitored, often on an indefinite basis, by the state.

These AOT laws are near-ubiquitous and represent a doubling down upon this coercive-psychiatry paradigm; in other words, they are the opposite of whatever liberated vision of mental-health care is endorsed, if hazily, by the #FreeBritney campaigners. I’ve wondered if those posting #FreeBritney realize there is already a robust movement for psychiatric patients’ civil rights, one that has been organizing for decades?

“I just want to say to people: Welcome to this movement,” said Mazel-Carlton. “It’s one of the less well-known liberation movements, but we’re really excited to have you if you want to fight by our sides and not just Britney’s.”

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