Plymouth County Outreach (PCO), via Town of East Bridgewater Police, applying for entire county, "PCO: a police/treatment outreach approach to high risk individuals with substance use disorder."

The Town of East Bridgewater is applying for funding in the amount of
$1,600,000 to support the existing Plymouth County Outreach (PCO) program. Ninety-seven
percent of this budget will support the allowable use category of law enforcement and first
responder deflection and diversion programming and 3% will support real-time data collection.
This project serves the area of Plymouth County, which has a population of 541,589.1 PCO is a
police directed post-overdose outreach model and serves to make treatment more accessible for
those struggling with Substance Use Disorder and their families. The key program components
of this proposal will enhance the current PCO model in three ways. First, the expansion of the reentry strategy to provide recovery support to pre-trial court-based populations including referrals
to local resources, sober living scholarships, and transportation vouchers. Second, the expansion
of recovery supports to youth including weekly youth recovery support groups and the
development of a policy and curriculum for educational SUD classes that schools can add to the
existing school drug policy violation disciplinary options. Finally, the creation of an Overdose
Fatality Review process to identify gaps in services and resources that contribute to fatal
overdose events including six OFR meetings reviewing 12-18 fatal events per year. This project
includes partnerships between the 27 police departments in Plymouth County, as well as the
Bridgewater State University Police Department, the Plymouth County District Attorney and
Sheriff, as well as all local hospitals and treatment facilities. PCO is administered by an
Advisory Board that is comprised of Police Chiefs, Physicians, and Public Health experts. Kelley
Research Associates (KRA) will serve as the research partner for this project and also maintain
the Critical Incident Management System (CIMS) software which records real-time data on all
overdoses that occur in Plymouth County. CIMS also manages and documents incident followup
outreach visits to determine the success at connecting individuals with treatment services,
shares information across communities using a county-wide incident notification system and
provides real-time reporting tools. Previous COSSAP funding from 2018 and 2020 allowed PCO
to establish long-term viability. This proposal signifies a strategic expansion of the PCO model
to fill critical gaps in current resources and services.