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Councilor Dean: community care medicine grant OK'd; BCAT logs ~40 new contacts monthly
Summary
Councilor Dean told the council the city received grant funding to stand up a community care medicine program and that the EMS license was approved; staff reported BCAT recorded roughly 40 "new interactions" per month this spring (March/April >40; May 32; June 46).
Councilor Dean opened the workshop by briefing the council on a new community care medicine program and related outreach work. "The city had received grant funding to stand up community care medicine programs, and the EMS license was just approved by the state," Dean said, noting the program is moving forward.
Dean also reported monthly contacts by the Bangor Community Assistance Team (BCAT). "In the months of March and April, we saw a pretty steep increase in the number of new people that BCAT was interacting with — above 40 in each of those months. May saw 32 new interactions, and June was back up at 46," Dean said. He and staff cautioned that the "new interactions" metric includes people in crisis who are not necessarily unhoused, so additional data are needed before treating the counts as a measure of homelessness inflow or outflow.
Why it matters: BCAT contacts and the community care medicine program influence how the city allocates outreach resources and coordinates with social services. Councilors asked staff to assemble exit and housing-status data where available so the council can better assess whether outreach is reducing homelessness or primarily documenting increased visibility in public spaces. The council directed staff to return with clarified metrics and the parameters of BCAT's data collection.
