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Date: 5/10/2022
NORTHAMPTON – During the City Council meeting on May 5, Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra proposed a restructuring of the city’s Health Department and announced a public hearing on May 19 to discuss this new administrative order.
Under the mayor’s proposal, the city’s Health Department would instead be called the Health and Human Services Department (DHHS), and current Health Director Merridith O’Leary would become the commissioner of this domain, while Michele Farry-who is currently the program manager for the regional Drug Addiction and Recovery Team- would serve as the deputy assistant commissioner.
According to Sciarra, this new proposal is an opportunity for the city to realize the future of the newly established Department of Community Care while simultaneously recognizing the work and expanded role the Health Department has played since 2015 in responding to behavioral health and human services. The Department of Community Care would officially become a part of the Health and Human Services Department, and Implementation Director Sean Donovan would be a crucial figure in this department’s future as the city continues its pursuit of prioritizing mental health through an empathetic, social service lens rather than through traditional police response.
“Codifying human services in our government structure is personally very meaningful to me,” said Sciarra. “This also fulfills a recommendation of the Northampton Policing Reviewing Commission that community care be situated under health.”
Inception of Department of Community Care
In July 2020, the city created the Northampton Policing Review Commission (NPRC), a 15-member resident commission appointed by former Mayor David Narkewicz and the City Council to conduct a public policy review and community conversation around policing and community safety and recommend reforms to the current organizational structure.
In March 2021, the commission submitted a final report titled “Reimagining Safety” with recommendations on how to improve policing services in Northampton to allow for a more equitable structure.
One of these recommendations included implementing a Department of Community Care, which would be a new city agency that responds to calls related to mental health, substance use, social service-related requests and other crisis situations of Northampton residents and visitors as an alternative to traditional police response.
At the end of 2021, the city appointed Donovan as the department’s implementation director, with duties that include developing the department’s organizational structure and staffing, job descriptions, operating policies and training and license requirements, as well as coordinating with other city departments, forming an advisory committee, developing a budget and pursuing state and federal level grants.
Duties under new Health and Human Services Department
During the May 5 meeting, O’Leary identified the core duties of the newly consolidated department. “I am excited for the opportunities and access that this restructure will provide to this wonderful city,” said O’Leary. “Restructuring will both improve the quality of established public health services and initiatives, as well as increase the breadth of services we can house within the department.”
O’Leary, who became public health director of Northampton in 2012, told the council that the overall goal of Health and Human Services is to “protect, preserve and promote the health and well-being of Northampton’s residents, particularly the most vulnerable.”
Some of the guiding principles of this proposed new department are using the best scientific evidence to inform the department’s work, providing culturally linguistically appropriate services to people of all backgrounds, and create equity through a policy and decision-making, among many other principals related to social service.
“We achieve our mission by providing and supporting accessible high-quality community-based healthcare and social services, community engagement and advocacy, development of health-promoting policies and regulations, disease and injury prevention, emergency services … and health education services,” said O’Leary.
According to O’Leary, the Department of Community Care will have access to several resources while under the Health and Human Services branch and will benefit from partnering with the DHHS on developing a model to assist people with substance use disorder. Among other things, the Department of Community Care will have access to health professionals, as well as integral health information data.
“By working under the DHHS umbrella, the [Department of Community Care] will be able to understand the populations they are serving in a broader context of intersectional public health issues, historical context, [as well as] structural and systemic inequities,” said O’Leary.
According to Donovan, the goal of the Department of Community Care is to address racial and social inequities by building “equitable, non-police, non-clinical responses for all while centering its most vulnerable community members in their struggles with emotional distress, substance use, houselessness, meeting basic needs, navigating conflicts, and other related challenges.”
Some of Donovan’s goals for fiscal year 2023 include identifying a training curriculum for community responders in the fall, as well as envisioning a co-location with the city’s future resilience hub, including a health center with low-barrier medical care.
The training curriculum will include non-coercive and connection-based responses to suicidal thoughts and other forms of emotional distress, harm reduction-based responses to struggles with substance use, as well as developing awareness of racial, disability and social equity throughout these practices.
“I think that being in public health, it means that we also have more of a history of focusing on prevention,” said Donovan. “I think we have both the ability to do prevention work and aftercare work.”
The City Council was overwhelmingly in support of this new proposed structure, and a public hearing on the matter will occur during the May 19 meeting.
“We’re much more in the center of making things happen,” said council President Jim Nash. “I think this is a critical step for us to be making right now.”