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. 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
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Ep. 8: Caroline Dunlap and the Harm Reduction Team
Justice In Action
It’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.
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Ep. 6: Equine Therapy with Meredith Norton
Justice In Action
For a child who has suffered long-term trauma from abuse or neglect, the world doesn’t feel like a safe place. And children who suffer from such complex trauma often face challenges when it comes to forming relationships with others, acting out with anger or suffering silently from depression.
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Ep. 4: Understanding the Spectrum of Sexualized Behavior in Clinical Work
Justice In Action
Most would agree that we live in a sex-saturated culture. So why do we find it so hard to talk about sex?
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Ep. 3: Protect children from sexual exploitation online
Justice In Action
Meredith Rapoza, Division Director of Permanency and Latency Services at JRI; Katryn Haley-Little, Clinical Director at My Life My Choice, a program of JRI helping children who have been exploited or who are deemed to be at risk; and Michelle Loranger, Executive Director of the Children's Advocacy Center of Bristol County, were guests on JRI’s weekly podcast series, “Justice in Action: Making a Difference as Leaders in Social Justice.”
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.