Sixteen area municipalities will use $81,418 from a Mosaic Municipal Matching Grant, coupled with a total of $58,000 in opioid settlement funds that the towns are contributing, to help remedy the local impact of the opioid epidemic through a variety of programs.
The Franklin Regional Council of Governments’ Cooperative Public Health Service received the Mosaic grant for the second consecutive year. This year’s grant will support programs such as Moms Do Care, which provides doula services to mothers facing addiction, as well as summer camp scholarships for children whose parents are in recovery.
Other funds will be distributed to recovery coaching pilot programs led by the Cooperative Public Health Service, which serves the towns of Ashfield, Bernardston, Buckland, Charlemont, Colrain, Conway, Gill, Hawley, Heath, Leyden, Monroe, Rowe, Shelburne, Erving and Northfield. This year, Montague applied for funding alongside the cooperative.
FRCOG Director of Community Health Phoebe Walker explained that by applying for the grant through a regional collaborative, rural communities can more easily secure funding.
“Most rural towns are getting almost nothing and they’re very disadvantaged by the state formula. The state is recognizing that and allowing us, instead of just applying for one-to one matching, to collaborate with other towns, so we can get more than a one-to-one match,” Walker said. “Last year, we were the very first opioid abatement collaborative in the state of Massachusetts. We were the first group of towns who actually agreed to work together, put up our money collectively and fund something together.”
Walker added that in addition to child care, recovery coaching and summer camp programs, the public health collaborative aims to work alongside the Franklin Regional Transit Authority (FRTA) in an effort to create more accessible transportation for those in recovery.
“Transportation barriers are real for hilltown residents,” she said. “We heard very clearly at our listening session in October that it’s really hard to get to the programs that help people get into recovery and stay there if they live in the hilltowns, so we are spending some of this funding to see what kind of models could work in our region to address that issue.”
FRCOG Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) Coordinator Jen Audley, who is overseeing the summer camp program, said roughly 20 day camps have been invited to participate. She said the camp scholarship initiative was inspired by a similar program launched by the Foundation for Community Justice.
In total, $15,000 of the sum is being allocated toward the summer camp scholarship program. She said Camp Apex in Shelburne, Camp Lion Knoll in Leyden and the Montague Parks & Recreation Department have expressed interest in participating.
“Having access to summer camp would benefit kids whose families were struggling, and also the families. It would give everybody a break and a chance to do something kind of fun and normal,” Audley said. “We’re hoping that we will be able to help families who live across the region in all 16 towns take advantage of this opportunity. It’s delightful to be able to support local summer camps that are doing a fantastic job of providing safe and positive experiences for kids and families every year.”
Moms Do Care, according to Program Manager Josefa Scherer, plans to use its $13,000 in grant funding to support its doula services. She noted that the time and transportation costs associated with the doulas’ trips to and from hospitals and clients’ homes can add up.
Scherer said she takes pride in the fact that Moms Do Care has never had to put any of its clients on a waiting list — a trend that she said will continue.
“Doula time and transportation are two of the major things that are supported by this funding,” Scherer said. “The effort required to seek and achieve reunification with their families, the journey that is recovery in the perinatal period, and just parenting and immediate postpartum in general … without the support of programs like the municipal matching grant, we wouldn’t have the staff time to support everybody that needs these resources. It’s been incredibly important, and will continue to be incredibly important, to make sure that anyone who you know is pregnant or parenting and in recovery in Franklin County is able to get really specialized, high-quality, patient-centered care.”