NORTHAMPTON — Although the Division of Community Care officially reached two years of operations late last week, the idea that eventually birthed it goes back several years earlier.
The DCC emerged as the end product of the Northampton’s response to nationwide protests in 2021, following the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, that saw calls for reform and alternatives to traditional policing and first response.
The city formed a commission that proposed an agency that could provide unarmed emergency response to mental health crises, substance abuse and other non-criminal incidents, ensuring that individuals experiencing those crisis situations could be taken care of without risk of further escalation or potential violence.
The final result was the DCC, which launched in September 2023 and over the last two years has begun to find its groove in providing assistance to residents struggling with mental health and homelessness. Though other towns and cities across the commonwealth have similar programs, the DCC stands out for being organized under the city’s Department of Health and Human Services, rather than public safety departments.
“It’s a model rooted in the simple idea that many calls for help are fundamentally health and human services issues, and they should be addressed that way,” said Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra in a speech made in front of the DCC’s current location in Roundhouse Plaza on Friday. “As a team, they [the DCC] are scrappy, but I will also add, dedicated, brilliant, resourceful and deeply compassionate.”
Sciarra, alongside other public officials such as DHHS Commissioner Merridith O’Leary, DCC Director Don Gibbs and Police Chief John Cartledge spoke during a celebration of the division’s two years of service on Friday, looking to highlight the accomplishments made by the DCC since its opening.
According to O’Leary, the DCC has logged over 13,000 instances of engagement with community members since its establishment, answering around 2,000 phone calls and serving more than 1,600 individuals. She also said the division had provided support for navigating housing and sheltering programs over 1,000 times.
“These numbers aren’t just numbers,” O’Leary said. “Each phone call, each visit, each connection represents a person. What on one day that might not have been the best day of their lives, they found support, dignity and care through the DCC.”
O’Leary said that the DHHS also completed a survey with 2,300 residents participating to identify the top health priorities for the city. The survey showed that over 60% of residents under the age of 50 named mental health as their greatest concern, with O’Leary adding that Northampton’s rate of mental health conditions are higher than the state average.
“As we celebrate today, let us also recommit ourselves to the road ahead,” O’Leary said. “The need is great, the challenges are real, but we have built something that is remarkable, and we have built it together.”
Gibbs, who was one of the inaugural members of the DCC before eventually becoming its director, said it was clear early on the DCC “was building something different.”
“We built a program rooted in empathy, centered in people, driven by the belief that public safety means more than just safety,” Gibbs said. “It means compassion, it means showing up for people where they are with the right kind of help.”
Other than Gibbs, the DCC has nine staff members, including six community responders. Gibbs credited the staff for working toward the division’s mission in assisting some of the city’s most vulnerable residents.
“You all show up every single day with courage, humility and dedication,” he said. “You bring calm to the chaos, dignity and distress, and I’m deeply proud of each and every one of you.”
The community responders work out of DCC’s headquarters in the Roundhouse Plaza, where they help residents with specific services, such as applying for food stamps or affordable housing. They undergo a two-month training period for the position as they are instructed in aspects of dealing with the mental health issues they may encounter on a call.
Community responders also engage in daily walks around the city (the word “patrol” is discouraged), collecting any needles they may find around bike routes and frequently stopping to greet members of the city’s homeless population, many of whom already have an relationship with the agency. Responders wear jackets identifying them as being part of the DCC, aiming to establish the agency as a known and trusted community asset.
Though created as an alternative to policing, Cartledge told those gathered that the DCC and the Northampton Police Department had built a strong relationship over the last two years, with full integration of the DCC into 911 dispatch back in March.
“This wasn’t just an operational change,” Cartledge said. “This was a powerful step towards fulfilling a promise made to our residents to prioritize a public safety response that centers on a public health framework.”
Cartledge also credited his predecessor, former Police Chief Jody Kasper, for laying the groundwork to have a collaborative and working relationship between the two agencies.
“As I stepped into this role, I was proud to continue this vision and deepen the department’s commitment to public safety that truly serves the whole community,” he said. “It’s a model that hasn’t been done before, and it required a great deal of learning flexibility and mutual respect.”
State Sen. Jo Comerford also praised the DCC as a leader in the state for treating mental health and related trauma as a public health issue, referring to it as a “vanguard operation.”
“This is not a path forward that many have taken. It is a path that is being built by cities like Northampton,” Comerford said. “We are feeling it in Boston, but I will say that we need to feel it a little more in our state budget.”