County outlines recovery celebration, peer court navigator and crisis teams as drug task force expands services

LIBERTY, N.Y. — Sullivan County’s Community Services and its drug task force told the Health and Human Services Committee on July 17 that the county is expanding recovery-focused programming and building crisis response capacity.

Melissa Stickel said the task force will host a recovery celebration Sept. 19 at Hanafi Park in Liberty and that the county has hired Emma Carlson as a peer court navigator to help divert eligible people from court involvement and assist specialty courts and probation. “She’s been taking a whole host of trainings, including certification courses so that she’ll be ready to work with our county court, our probation, and our specialty court,” Stickel said.

Stickel and other staff reported that Camille has been named the county’s SIT crisis coordinator and will coordinate crisis providers, a crisis intervention team (CIT) and a community trauma response team (CTRT). They aim to have both teams operational by year-end, subject to volunteer recruitment and training.

The county also said it will award a recently issued RFP for a first-responder wellness program to train clinicians in cultural competence for first-responder populations and is coordinating youth-focused systems-of-care events and trainings with partner organizations.

Why it matters: The changes expand local capacity for diversion, crisis response and first-responder wellness. Public commenters and service providers at the meeting stressed the evolving pattern of polysubstance use and urged more comprehensive approaches to treatment and prevention.