Summit to address local heroin epidemic

LYNN – One fled the courthouse. One went to Middleton Jail. One went to detox. But while their respective charges and subsequent whereabouts differed, the three clients Lynn District Court Probation Officer Don Castle saw Dec. 19 all had one thing in common: heroin addiction.”We’re trying our best, but it’s just overwhelming,” Castle said. “I’d say that 50 percent of probationers are involved in heroin, although they are arrested for all sorts of things.”As a probation officer, Castle can recommend many options for a probationer, including jail, detox, sober homes, drug and alcohol screens, etc. But these options require collaboration among the different agencies providing the services, and Castle said that isn’t always easy. Especially, he said, with the number of probation officers at Lynn District Court – the traditional go-between for the police, service providers and attorneys – dropping from 21 to 12.Since probation officers, police, service providers and others are all citing heroin as the common denominator, Castle thinks it’s time to get all these agencies on the same page, and has organized a Greater Lynn Opiate Awareness Summit for officials to gather and discuss the heroin epidemic.”We’re all kind of doing our own thing,” Castle said. “I know other people are already meeting, and they’ve included me in their meetings, but I think that if we can come out of this as more of a united front in the city, I think this could help.”The summit will be held Jan. 16 and is scheduled to gather more than 20 agencies, including area police and fire departments, local nonprofit social service agencies, schools and health providers. Castle said he expects about 200 people to attend. Guest speakers are scheduled to include recovering heroin addicts, family members of addicts, and representatives from the social-service, law enforcement, and medical fields.Castle acknowledged that many groups are already doing great work to address the heroin epidemic from different angles. For instance, he praised the Lynn Drug Court for its intensely supervised, court-mandated drug treatment and the nonprofit Learn to Cope with hosting support groups for parents and family members affected by addiction.But 2014 set another record for both fatal and nonfatal overdoses in Lynn and Essex County, and heroin addiction in the Bay State shows no signs of waning nearly a year after Gov. Deval Patrick designated heroin addiction a public-health emergency.And people need help to stop using.”The biggest thing is finding treatment and finding beds for people; there are too few beds,” Castle said. “The first step is detox and we need more detox beds to get people off the street.”Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett, whose office will participate in the forum, agreed.”We really need to have treatment on demand,” Blodgett said. “The people I talk to in the field, the probation officers, other professionals, will tell you, that many times, they will see a client who will say, ?I think I’m slipping’?and they are unable to get them a bed or treatment.”Castle said he hopes the summit will be the first of several meetings that enable the various constituents to pool resources to provide greater access to available treatment.Goals also include a resource guide to catalogue the available options for a person affected by addiction, a greater awareness of the different services offered by health care and other service providers, how treatment is impacted by health insurance, and a greater awareness of the extent of the heroin epidemic.”If somebody walks into Lynn Court and they use heroin, we should be able to get them into treatment,” Castle said. “Figuring out what is the best way to do that is my goal.”