A second Wentworth County outreach van began patrolling Bellwater streets this week, ending a three-year funding fight that outlasted two budget cycles and, advocates say, cost the county's overdose-response program valuable time.
A second Wentworth County outreach van began patrolling Bellwater streets this week, giving the county’s overdose-response program its widest reach yet after a three-year funding fight that outlasted two separate budget cycles.
The van, which pairs a county paramedic with a peer-recovery specialist, will focus initially on Cedar Hollow and Riverside Heights, two neighborhoods that officials say the original van, launched several years ago and credited with helping drive the county’s overdose deaths down from a peak of 118 to 61 last year, could not adequately cover on its own.
A funding fight that outlasted two budgets
Dr. Kwame Asare, director of the Wentworth County Department of Health, said the department first requested funding for a second van three budget cycles ago, only to see the request cut both times amid broader belt-tightening. “We had the data. We had a model that was already working. What we didn’t have, for a long time, was the money,” Asare said.
Council Member Gary Petrowski, who represents Cedar Hollow and has pushed for treatment funding throughout his time on the council, said the delay frustrated him enough that he tied the request to this year’s broader push for behavioral-health investment rather than treating it as a standalone line item. “Every year we didn’t fund this, somebody in my district paid for that delay in a way that doesn’t show up on a spreadsheet,” Petrowski said.
We knew the model worked. We just kept getting told to prove it worked a little more before the county would pay for a second one. At some point that stops being due diligence and starts being an excuse.
Donna Wysocki, executive director, Wayfinder Recovery Services
Donna Wysocki, executive director of Wayfinder Recovery Services, which operates both vans under contract with the county, said the delay meant the original van’s staff often had to choose which neighborhood to prioritize on a given night, a trade-off she said likely cost lives. “You can’t be in Cedar Hollow and Riverside Heights at the same time,” Wysocki said. “For three years, that’s exactly what we were asking one van and two people to do.”
A volunteer who once needed the van himself
Among the new van’s volunteers is Curtis Boone, a 41-year-old Cedar Hollow resident who was reached by the original outreach van’s staff two years into his own recovery and now works part-time at a hardware store while volunteering with the program. Boone said he plans to split his volunteer shifts between both vans in the coming months. “The first time someone from that van talked to me, I wasn’t ready to hear it,” Boone said. “Somebody has to keep showing up anyway, because eventually people are ready, and you don’t get to pick when.”
Bellwater General Health System CEO Dr. Angela Whitcombe, whose system has expanded its own addiction-treatment and behavioral-health services in recent years, said the hospital has coordinated with Wayfinder to ensure the second van’s staff can refer patients directly into the hospital’s programs rather than relying on emergency-room visits as an entry point. “The van meeting someone on the street is only useful if there’s somewhere for that person to go next,” Whitcombe said. “We’ve worked hard to make sure that pathway exists.”
The county’s health department said it will track the second van’s outcomes separately from the original for the first six months to measure whether coverage of Cedar Hollow and Riverside Heights specifically drives down overdose calls in those neighborhoods, a report Asare said the department plans to make public regardless of the results. Petrowski said he intends to use that report to push for a third van if the data supports it, though he acknowledged that request would likely face its own budget fight.
“I’d like to tell you three years taught the county something about moving faster on things that save lives,” Petrowski said. “I hope it did. I guess we’ll find out the next time we ask for one of these.”
The new van is staffed on a rotating basis by two paramedics and three peer-recovery specialists, including Boone, and will operate five nights a week initially, with weekend coverage added within the first month depending on demand. Wysocki said Wayfinder has already fielded requests from residents in Foundry Row and Downtown Core asking whether either van might expand into their neighborhoods next, requests she said the organization cannot yet accommodate without additional funding.
Asare said the health department’s six-month tracking period will also examine whether the second van reduces the burden on Bellwater General’s emergency department for non-emergency overdose-related visits, a metric Whitcombe said the hospital has offered to help compile. “If this van keeps three people a week out of our emergency room who didn’t need to be there, that’s a good outcome for them and for us,” Whitcombe said.