Representatives of the Community and Law Enforcement for Addiction Recovery (CLEAR) program visited Newtown Parent Connection for a special presentation on Thursday, September 11.

Newtown Parent Connection has held several provider spotlights in honor of September being National Recovery Month and National Suicide Prevention Month. These spotlights recognize individuals or groups that educate and empower people in preventing substance abuse.

Nicole Hampton, executive director of Newtown Parent Connection, said this is a larger part of the nonprofit’s mission to embrace families in crisis and build a community where recovery is supported and celebrated.

To that end, she reached out to CLEAR to do a presentation before one of Newtown Parent Connection’s weekly Hope & Support Group meetings.

CLEAR is a behavioral health initiative under McCall Behavioral Health Network, which has law enforcement connect individuals with substance use disorders to treatment and support instead of arresting them.

With how difficult addiction and substance use can be to talk about, Hampton felt connecting the community to CLEAR can show people how many resources are available to them.

Several CLEAR representatives spoke to a small crowd of people, talking about the program and how they have worked with Newtown Police Department (NPD) to respond to high risk and overdose victims in the Newtown area.

The program started around 2022, according to CLEAR Statewide Project Manager Lauren Pristo. It was a pilot funded through the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.

A few pilot sites were selected to represent a diverse set of communities, with a new award allowing for expansion throughout western Connecticut.

A few of CLEAR’s goals, Pristo said, are to reduce overdoses through education, engagement, and awareness, and have law enforcement involved in outreach and deflection efforts.

Pristo said they wanted to see how they could partner law enforcement in with that initiative, especially to change the way people engage in and are connected to care.

“That’s particularly important in communities where there’s not a large urban center, where we can easily go out and find folks who could benefit from the support,” Pristo explained.

She added a lot of overdoses, especially in Connecticut, are happening in people’s homes. This means it is important to use strategies to engage with people who might otherwise feel isolated or alone.

CLEAR also creates partnerships and collaborations to support high-risk individuals and their families, and expands the availability of and access to evidence-based and promising practices. These practices include harm reduction, medication-based treatments, outreach, and alternatives to policing.

Pristo said, with their new initiative, CLEAR is expanding to communities such as Newtown and Ridgefield.

“We’re up and running, and we’re hoping to bring more of this activity to the larger region,” Pristo explained.

Expanding Outreach & Support

The expansion helps CLEAR expand collaboration with additional first responder agencies and hospitals, create re-entry services for people returning to the community with a substance abuse disorder, and facilitate statewide structure for additional communities to onboard.

Pristo said this is especially important because the nation’s current system of care is a sequential intercept model.

The model, created by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, describes how individuals with mental and substance use disorders can engage with support and move through the criminal justice system.

However, Pristo said the model “requires crisis, requires law enforcement, and requires going to jail.”

She continued, “Where are the opportunities to engage folks before they ever have to be arrested or be incarcerated? How can we really engage folks and provide them with the necessary support before that progression starts?”

CLEAR came as a solution to those issues. Pristo called CLEAR a deflection program, which do not result in arrest and typically do not have criminal justice enforcement beyond contact with officers in the field.

She said CLEAR is another layer of support where people can receive care “before they ever enter the system.” Someone in law enforcement will engage the person in crisis and connect them to a CLEAR outreach specialist through a warm hand-off.

“So rather than, ‘I’m gonna send you to jail and I hope you can get support there,’ there’s now a new option,” Pristo said.

CLEAR Site Coordinator Michele Flowers said that these community engagement specialists, as well as family recovery coaches, are responsible for following up with the referred individual.

They provide a wide range of support from harm reduction and wellness planning to education and peer support. These engagements can be in person or over the phone, as directed by the program participant.

Once those warm hand-offs are made, Flowers said the impact for the individual connecting to someone who can help them “affects them so profoundly.”

Flowers said it helps families feel as though their voices are being heard, that they have support and always have somewhere to go to.

“Just recently, we heard a family say how much it was a game changer for them,” Flowers said. “For them, it was a powerful moment in terms of knowing they weren’t alone.”

She also said that referrals are one-stop. As CLEAR gets information, it does not go back. Any information CLEAR enters is for their view only; law enforcement will not have access.

A Culture Of Change

Ximena Varas, a CLEAR community engagement specialist, said their main goal coming into this interaction is to connect with an individual who is struggling.

“I’m working with the individual who is struggling versus the family,” Varas explained. “I get to follow them along, help them, and try to problem solve where we can connect this individual and get them to where they need to be.”

That is done through supportive follow-ups, daily to weekly phone calls, and harm reduction. Varas also helps people plan wellness goals, not just from a sobriety standpoint, but also a employment and housing standpoint.

Varas said she works with people to help them find how to improve their overall quality of life. If a person has educational goals, a community engagement specialist will think of ways to help them get their GED or go back to college; whatever it is the person wants to do.

The big thing for her role, Varas said, is making sure people are okay and that no one is ever alone.

“We follow up until we don’t need to anymore, until that person is standing. And that may take weeks, it may take months, it may take longer,” Varas explained.

NPD Officer Maryhelen McCarthy said she has already seen great results in NPD’s few months working with CLEAR.

While McCarthy was initially skeptical of CLEAR, she called it a great tool for their tool belt, adding, “I can’t even explain to you how important this program has been to our department.”

“I’ve just seen a lot of good things. I’ve had family members call just to say thank you. It’s not that the problem is always solved, but it’s that somebody listened,” McCarthy said. “We don’t have all the answers, but now we’ve got additional answers.”

To learn more about Newtown Parent Connection, visit ctparentconnection.org. To learn more about CLEAR, visit mccallbhn.org/community/community-engagement.

Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.