Originally published in The Sylva Herald in Feb. 7 edition.
The Sylva Police Department at the Jan. 25 meeting presented the town board with an updated report regarding the Community Care program, a joint effort of the SPD and Western Carolina University to assist folks in need.
In the wake of the 2020 Covid pandemic, Sylva and every other law enforcement agency in the country struggled with an opioid epidemic, housing crisis, a broken mental health system and an increase in homelessness between the years 2020-21, Sylva Police Chief Chris Hatton told the board.
The Community Care program resulted in November 2021 and began finding its feet.
“That first year or so was really just building. ‘What does it look like? We don’t know,’” Sylva Police Chief Chris Hatton said. “What Galadriel does is not police work, but it’s work that nobody else does.”
Galadriel LaVere serves as Sylva PD social worker and Community Care Coordinator.
“We’ve had many conversations together where they’ve had the same outcome of, ‘We’re sitting in our office over at the police department, two people with master’s degrees, and we can’t figure it out,’” he said.
Starting a program involving collaboration between many different organizations made the task daunting, he said.
Several changes were made to the program in its first year, including the placement of a social worker on active police calls to produce a more suitable outcome.
More than the homeless
“Community Care doesn’t just do homeless assistance,” Hatton said. “We have helped town employees, we have helped college professors, we have helped people in all walks of life. A lot of people mistake homelessness for a crime. It’s not a crime. ‘They could just stop using drugs and they’d be fine’ – anybody that knows anything about addiction knows that’s just not the case. Nobody signs up to be a drug addict.”
LaVere took to the podium and addressed the board as well.
“One of the biggest duties that position takes on is dealing with our homeless population,” LaVere said. “It’s very heavy when you look at the homelessness issues, poverty – those issues go hand in hand. We also have high numbers in mental health and substance use, and those can be co-occurring.”
LaVere, who holds a master’s degree in social work, described the different facets of the Community Care programs and what it offers.
“One of the cool things about this program is, it can be anything,” she said. “It can be as simple as me getting information for the Jackson County program. It could be, if transit’s not available, it can be transporting them … or helping draw up paperwork. My job is to find out what is the barrier that is leading them to not be successful. That can be different for every individual we see.”
About 62 percent of Community Care referrals ended with the offer of help welcomed by the recipient.
If the first attempt to find help fails, staff tries again.
“If somebody comes back to me, or I am able to get back in touch with them, and they say ‘This didn’t work,’ my job is to find something else that will work,” LaVere said. “If an individual is in the program, that doesn’t mean they just might need a housing referral. A lot of these individuals, it’s multiple referrals. If there’s housing and there’s poverty, there is usually food insecurity. So, we’re talking about connecting them to multiple organizations.”
A big barrier for clients of the program is maintaining a permanent mailing address and government identification.
“That’s a big thing, helping somebody get IDs and a Social Security card, especially if they are experiencing homelessness,” LaVere said. “Getting through those steps, we do have Blue Ridge Health in the area that generally doesn’t turn people away. We do have organizations in the area that will sit down with people and see if they qualify for Medicaid and help them through the avenues of getting that.
“Transit is somewhat limited with getting people to appointments sometimes. I’m only one person, and usually the other offices that are helping the organizations – that’s just not always what they can do, is drive people.”
Navigator
“If you’re not well, and you don’t have someone who can help navigate, Galadriel is stepping into that role,” said Cyndy Caravelis, WCU criminal justice professor and the university’s program partner. “For the individuals who come to the attention of law enforcement, these are typically folks that fall through the cracks.”
The SPD and WCU are making collaborative efforts towards the strengthening of the care program, she said.
“In the absence of people having other people, this is the community stepping in to help them navigate this first step of what to do,” Caravelis said.
