Ep. 18: Trauma-sensitive yoga effective with LGBTQ+ youth
Justice In Action
Sexual assault, bullying and harassment are traumatic for all survivors of any age. Transgender and non-binary youth are at high risk for encountering these experiences, which can lead to the development of complex trauma that may include a lack of trust in other people and even estrangement from their own bodies. About half of all transgender or non-binary youth have experienced sexual assault. As a result, many experience anxiety and depression, including suicidal thoughts, and are more likely than their cis-gender peers to live with a sense of...
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Ep. 17: Substance Use Recovery
Justice In Action
Guiding our clients toward recovery from substance use disorder The opioid epidemic has increased the demand for effective recovery services, and Justice Resource Institute’s Mary Chao is leading the organization’s training program for clinicians and other staff members to aid them in helping clients recover. Chao has been with JRI for nine years and works with the agency’s health, training and community-based services divisions, developing and coordinating substance use programming throughout the agency. She works closely with clients ages 12 to 24 and the JRI clinicians who help them...
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Ep. 16: Mental Heath Treatment for Clients with Developmental Differences
Justice In Action
Mental health clinicians are often reluctant to treat people who have intellectual and developmental differences (IDDs) for fear of doing something that could worsen rather than improve the client’s condition. In this episode of Justice in Action, two JRI clinicians, Dr. Jacquelyn Kraps, Metrowest Area Director and Clinical Director of Outpatient Services, and Bailey McCombs, Licensed Metal Health Counselor and Expressive Arts Therapist, talk about the rewards and challenges of working with children with a range of differences, from autism spectrum disorder to chromosomal differences,...
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Ep. 15: Data and research improve treatment of complex trauma
Justice In Action
Few social service agencies are as committed as JRI to improving treatment through research and data. In today’s episode of Justice in Action, we talk to Hilary Hodgdon, Research Director at Justice Resource Institute, and Lia Martin, Senior Associate Director of Quality Management. Together, they are part of a data and research division that is unusual among social service agencies for its size and scope. JRI clients suffer from complex trauma. On average, a child or adolescent seeing a JRI therapist has experienced three different types of trauma, such as neglect, physical abuse or...
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Ep. 14: Courageous Conversations
Justice In Action
Staff of Justice Resource Institute don’t shy away from talking about tough issues like racial justice, immigration policy or vaccine hesitancy.
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Ep. 13: Covid-19 pandemic boosts need for foster homes
Justice In Action
More than 8,400 Massachusetts children are in foster care, and the need is growing as the financial and emotional strain of the Covid-19 pandemic and the state’s opioid crisis continue to take a toll on children and families.
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Ep. 12: Permanent Connections are Vital for a Child’s Success
Justice In Action
We all need the people in our lives who know us and care about us, who celebrate our successes and comfort us in hard times. These are the people we call when we get a new job, lock our keys in the car or are facing a big decision.
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Ep. 11: Children's Advocacy Center
Justice In Action
CAC mental health clinicians Brittannie Moroz and Jillian Allen shared CDC data stating one in four girls and one in 13 boys under age 18 suffer trauma as a result of child sexual abuse. Those children are some of the approximately 75,000 Bristol County children age 16 and younger be-lieved to have suffered trauma from abuse, violence, addiction in their homes or other causes of childhood trauma.
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Ep. 10: Trauma-sensitive yoga w/ Jennifer Turner
Justice In Action
Trauma-sensitive yoga helps sufferers use their bodies to heal their spirits
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Ep. 9: The Wounded Healer
Justice In Action
Helping the healer when their work unearths old symptoms of trauma
info_outlineIt’s easy to find Caroline Dunlap and the Harm Reduction team at JRI’s Program RISE. They’re the ones wearing backpacks while meeting people in downtown Framingham, dispensing care and concern, along with vital supplies, to the region’s active drug users.
"We are trying to fill in the gap” for services to people who are part of a “stigmatized population” who inject, smoke or snort opioids or other drugs and run the risk of dying from drug overdose, becoming homeless, or contracting HIV or Hepatitis C or infection from sharing used needles, Dunlap says.
The team’s services range from giving out socks and winter clothing, teaching drug users how to use Narcan, also known as naloxone, to reverse the effects of an overdose, helping people sign up for the SNAP program (Food Stamps) or deciding to enter a detox or treatment program.
“Our main goal is to provide compassionate care” — without pressure — to people who often live on the margins because they use drugs, Dunlap says.
Harm reduction originated in the 1980s in response to the AIDS epidemic. Many of AIDS’ early victims lived on the streets, injected drugs, were gay or transgender or were sex workers largely ignored or even scorned by others. Because government offices and policy usually did not provide for their needs (needle exchange programs were illegal) people found ways to care for one another.
“We are all that we have and it’s up to us to protect each other,” she says.
Needle exchange programs have sharply reduced the number of new AIDS cases: between 2000 and 2014, HIV infection rates fell 91 percent among Massachusetts intravenous drug users, Dunlap says.
Dunlap went to college to study environmental science in order to become a park ranger, but she moved from Massachusetts to the San Francisco Bay Area and was drawn to harm reduction work, in part because of her own struggles with depression.
Dunlap’s team of three or four meet 15 to 30 clients a week at their offices, but they also walk around downtown Framingham with backpacks and wearing shirts and jackets that read “Harm Reduction Staff” with the program’s phone numbers and talking to people on the street. They give out essentials to help the people they meet: hygiene supplies, kits for safer drug use, wound care kits.
Program RISE is also introducing a mobile van that will allow drug users to exchange syringes, get Narcan training or get tested for HIV and sexually transmitted infections.
“Harm reduction is more than just needles,” Dunlap says.
The trauma associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, related unemployment and family strains are a factor in the rising overdose rates, she believes. Yet people have a hard time talking about it.
“Drugs provide an out for people in traumatic circumstance,’ Dunlap says. “There’s so much stigma around drugs that people often are hesitant to ask for help…Anyone can suffer from addiction” but often people don’t recognize the cost of habitual drug use until it affects a child, husband, coworker, parent or friend.
“It’s hard to be empathetic until it’s your kid (but) you never know who around you is in trouble,” she says. “We are here to look out for each other. I’m definitely alive because someone looked out for me.”
You can find Program RISE on Instagram at metrowest_harmreduction, on Facebook at Program RISE or on the website at www.jri.org/rise.