RUTLAND — Two Rutland nonprofit organizations are coming together to run and house a substance treatment program a short distance from the city’s downtown.
Rutland Mental Health Services is moving its Evergreen Substance Abuse Center to unoccupied space in the administration building of BROC Community Action in Southwestern Vermont. The BROC building is at 45 Union St., about a block from Rutland’s central business district.
RMHS’ Evergreen facility has been housed in leased space on Granger Street, which is also near Rutland’s downtown, but not as close as the Union Street location.
The move will provide Evergreen with more space for programming, according to Dick Courcelle, CEO of Rutland Mental Health Services. It will also allow those receiving services through the treatment program to access on site other support programs offered at BROC.
“By co-locating our substance abuse program with an agency like BROC Community Action that provides services to help people become and remain self-sufficient, we can offer our clients easier and greater access to a broad array of support services,” Courcelle said Wednesday.
The move is expected to take place sometime this fall, Courcelle said. RMHS will lease 4,000 square feet in the BROC building, a little more than at the Granger Street building.
“It really just provided us with an opportunity to locate close to where we were and we’re still in an area that is easily accessible,” he said. “It’s with mixed feeling that we’re moving, because Evergreen was operating quite well out of Granger Street. It’s been a great location.”
But programs are growing, and the move allows RMHS to have them under one roof, he said.
RMHS is also moving its adult outpatient program to the BROC building from its current location on Court Square.
Courcelle talked of the moves helping to add to an “integrated model of community health.”
“We share so much in common with respect to the people that we serve as BROC does,” he said. “We recognize that a lot services that many of our people in recovery need, BROC is involved in.”
“It’s still two independent organizations,” Courcelle added. “I think they’ll be great benefit to both organizations of locating this type of service there.”
Evergreen has about 600 clients a year and 19 staff members, he said. Evergreen offers substance abuse treatment services and plans to start additional programming this fall, the CEO said, including plans for medication-assisted treatment in 2018.
That involves the use of Suboxone, a commercial name for buprenorphine, which is used to treat opioid dependence. The plan is to start the medication assisted-treatment program early next year, along with offering other support services, Courcelle said.
“We thought this was something that we should modestly look at getting into because there certainly is the need in the community,” he said.
Also, this fall Evergreen will offer a new program for women coping with substance abuse problems who are in danger of losing custody of their children or are working at reunifying with them, Courcelle said.
Tom Donahue, BROC CEO, spoke Wednesday of the “synergies” created by the move of Evergreen treatment center into his organization’s building.
“I feel very strongly that we’re better together when it comes to BROC Community Action and other organizations,” he said. “What we’ve been trying to do is to collaborate with everybody we can.”
The BROC building on Union Street has about 25,000 square feet, and Donahue said he had been looking for another tenant to help fill an empty spot for some time.
Leasing space to RMHS made a great deal of sense in terms of providing services to people, he said, adding, “A lot of the folks they see or that we see might share challenges in life that we both look to solve.”
