Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • Vegas Stronger Starts by Asking Businesses to Call Them, Not Police

    When Las Vegas' restrictions on encampments pushed unhoused people into a shopping center outside the restricted zone, Vegas Stronger worked with business owners and the police to intervene without the need for arrests and jail. Although only two months old, the nonprofit has helped about 30 people through the network of services it has arranged. Services include housing, mental health and substance abuse treatment, and other connections to services people need to stay healthy and off the streets. Police welcome the interventions because they are relieved of handling non-criminal matters.

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  • Officers try to break stigma, offer help to drug users

    Tucson Police Department's Substance Use Resource Team reaches out on the streets to people with substance-use disorder, offering them treatment instead of arrest and jail. The team is an extension of the department's mental health support team and was started in response to the opioid epidemic. Officers talk to people they find on the streets, or follow up on 911 calls for overdoses. Not everyone accepts the offered help, and some end up arrested on warrants. But, at a time of rising overdose deaths, the officers and the peer support specialists who accompany them often can get people into treatment.

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  • Portland's Bybee Lakes Hope Center: A jail no more

    Multnomah County sold its unused Wapato Jail to a developer whose nonprofit partner has used grants and donations to turn the former jail into Bybee Lakes Hope Center, a residential treatment program for unhoused people. After two weeks in temporary homeless-shelter status, people can opt to enroll in a three-month treatment program, something that 65% of them have agreed to do. That program combines sober living rules with job training and other services. Nearly 200 people have completed the program. The center is working on a large expansion project providing hundreds more beds.

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  • How Project Dastaan is helping survivors of the 1947 India-Pakistan partition reconnect to their ancestral homes

    Refugees and survivors of the 1947 India-Pakistan partition reconnect to their homes through virtual reality footage of their homes and villages. The initiative, Project Dastaan, seeks to provide emotional closure to people who had to flee their homes in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. It also allows the children and grandchildren of survivors to gain a better understanding of their own histories and the trauma experienced by their loved ones. The digital experiences aim to raise awareness of the impact of the conflict and promote peace between the countries.

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  • How Schools Can Help Kids Heal After A Year Of 'Crisis And Uncertainty'

    Students' mental health is becoming a higher priority for schools across the U.S. At Hernandez Middle School in Chicago, each day starts with a check-in from their teacher, along with a mindfulness lesson and other useful coping skills. In Washington, D.C., some schools are partnering with local mental health organizations to provide counseling services to students.

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  • Part 2: “There is no Champion” — Granite State News Collaborative

    White Mountain Restorative Justice offers juvenile and adult court diversion and victim-offender mediation programs. WMRJ aims to guide first-time low-level offenders through restorative justice processes to hold offenders accountable, repair the harm caused by crime, and prevent reoffences.

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  • A Fatal Police Shooting in Lents Was the Nightmare Portland Officials Tried to Prevent

    After the U.S. Justice Department found that Portland police used excessive force too often when dealing with people in mental health crises, the city formed an unarmed mobile crisis team and a team of police officers with extra training in such cases. Neither team was used when a man with a history of mental illness, armed with what turned out to be a toy gun, was shot to death by a police officer. The Portland Street Response team was not called because the incident occurred outside its limited working hours during the team's pilot phase.

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  • Restorative Justice in Indian Country

    Like standard drug courts, the Penobscot Nation's Healing to Wellness Court refers people facing drug-related criminal charges to substance abuse counseling as an alternative to punishment. But this court and other tribal wellness courts are steeped in indigenous customs, blended with restorative justice approaches, to emphasize rehabilitation based on trust, support, and native traditions. The threat of punishment looms over participants should they fail in their counseling program. But no one has been jailed in the past two years in the Penobscot program.

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  • Lapwai addresses mental health by understanding a child's personal story and culture

    The Lawpwai School District in Idaho has taken a different approach to behavioral health. This new approach includes focusing on teaching positive behavior expectations, partnering with agencies to make on-site therapy available, educating staff on trauma and finding ways to inject Nez Perce culture into the whole process.

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  • A Portland Program Intended to Reduce Police Interactions With People in Crisis Is Off to a Slow Start

    The Portland Street Response program sends a paramedic and social worker on non-emergency calls, often involving mental health crises, instead of sending police. The pilot project, operating during weekday hours in one neighborhood, was assigned 60 calls in its first 40 business days. That tiny percentage of 911 calls falls short of expectations, possibly because dispatchers' screening of calls is defined too narrowly, or because dispatchers are being protective of the police. Supporters say the program always was meant to start small and deliberately, but its call volume is averaging much less than planned.

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