GREENFIELD — The old Lunt Silversmith property may have a new program to aid those in recovery from substance abuse and addiction.
A six-month stay recovery center with 30 beds for men will be added to the Federal Street campus and run by the Behavioral Health Network (BHN), pending site plan approval by the town’s Planning Board.
This recovery home, which will parallel three similar programs BHN runs in Springfield, will join the organization’s acute treatment Franklin Recovery Center and two-week, 32-bed Northern Hope Center program. In addition, in April the Clinical & Support Options (CSO) crisis and respite services announced it is expecting to move from High Street onto the campus late this year.
BHN’s Senior Vice President Candy Darcy sees the six-month program at the Residential Recovery Home Treatment Center as an opportunity to bridge the gap some of its patients face after leaving the Northern Hope Center’s detox services.
Darcy said the recovery home will ideally open within six to eight months, pitting a 2018 opening date.
“It would be a tremendous asset to the Greenfield community because the more clean time that somebody has the more successful they are likely to be,” Darcy said. “We see people graduating from the Northern Hope Center and they have no place to go that would be supportive of their recovery. Sometimes they’re homeless. Sometimes were able to get them into other residential programs.”
This program will add to the existing long-term recovery centers in Greenfield. ServiceNet runs the Beacon House, one for men and one for women. The BHN model that will open on their developing Federal Street campus will be run primarily by professionals as opposed to peers, Darcy said.
It was always BHN’s hope to have this six-month program brought to the campus, but logistics got in the way at first.
“We always hoped to put more services on the campus, but we always are sort of at the mercy of DPH putting out (Request For Responses) for new programs,” Darcy said.
Following the possibility of more money to build residential treatment programs through MassHealth and to help run treatment, BHN was approached by the state to see if it wanted to still do this program.
When Darcy found out that this could happen, she was excited that her organization could bring more beds for long term recovery in the community.
On Thursday, the town’s Planning Board tabled a vote on the site plan for the recovery center until June 21 after the applicant failed to bring exterior elevations of the proposed plans to the meeting.
The campus may not be done developing. Darcy hopes for medical services to be added to the old restaurant part of the Lunt complex. CSO will be going into that space, but Darcy said there will be room for additional services. No plans are on the table yet.
For those who will be going through the six months recovery, they will have to put up some money for room and board, but many expenses will be paid for. The payments will work on a sliding scale, Darcy said, with people toward the end of the program paying less so they can save money for housing when they graduate.
Another part of the program will be an attempt to help people toward the end of their recovery obtain either jobs or schooling. Some patients may head to Greenfield Community College, Darcy said, while others could go to trade school. This could be during the six months or after. Others will be assisted in finding jobs while in treatment so that when they do step out of the recovery center, they already have a stable job.
You can reach
Joshua Solomon at:
jsolomon@recorder.com