LOWELL — After about a decade of collaboration between officials, agencies and different groups to make it all happen, the ribbon was cut on Vinfen’s new Restoration Center of Greater Lowell Tuesday and it will begin accepting patients on Wednesday.
Planning for the Restoration Center began about a decade ago with Middlesex Sheriff Peter Koutoujian, who had heard about the restoration center model being used to treat addiction in other parts of the country. The idea of these centers, Koutoujian said, was to provide an alternative gateway for addiction treatment rather than forcing those in need of help to use the emergency room or first be involved in the criminal justice system.
“Visits could be diverted, and police could bring people in, instead of having to arrest them and incarcerate them,” Koutoujian told The Sun Tuesday morning.
Koutoujian visited one such facility in San Antonio, Texas, and said he “knew it was the model we needed to replicate across the country.” No such model existed in Massachusetts, Koutoujian said.
The effort to make a restoration center happen in Massachusetts picked up in 2017 with the formation of the Middlesex County Restoration Center Commission, which consisted of behavioral health providers, law enforcement officials, lawmakers and community advocates meeting monthly. The commission was led by Koutoujian and Massachusetts Association for Mental Health President and CEO Danna Mauch.
Koutoujian said all of the largest mental health treatment facilities in the country are jails, and the Middlesex Jail and House of Correction he runs is likely the largest in Massachusetts.
“We provide high-level treatment for people in mental health or substance use crises, but the fact is you shouldn’t have to come to jail for that treatment … We need to have a place besides an emergency room, and aside from a police lockup and the justice system where people can go for treatment so they never have to end up justice involved,” said Koutoujian.
The Restoration Center offers services like triage and medical clearance, a peer-led living room as a supportive space, short-term sober-support beds, inpatient detoxification and clinical stabilization services, outpatient counseling, medication to treat addiction and short-term respite care in a supervised and therapeutic setting. The facility will be operated by Vinfen in partnership with Spectrum Health Systems, and patients can walk in at any time or be dropped off by first responders.
“Across Massachusetts we have expanded access to behavioral health services, but individuals in crisis too often still end up in emergency departments or in the criminal justice system,” Vinfen President and CEO Jean Yang said in a statement. “The Restoration Center creates a welcoming, trauma-informed place where people can receive immediate care, stabilization and connection to treatment, strengthening the entire behavioral health continuum across the Greater Lowell region.”
Mauch said in a statement that the Restoration Center going online “is a notable achievement, spanning nearly a decade of work by our Commission, legislative partners and advocates.”
“It is an excellent example of the impact that is possible when organizations and individuals come together to find the best possible option for meeting the needs of people with complex behavioral health conditions — a ‘no wrong door’ — to urgent evaluation, stabilizing treatment and supported recovery,” said Mauch.
The Restoration Center’s launch Tuesday will serve as a pilot program serving Middlesex County. State Sen. Cindy Friedman was on the commission, and said part of the center being a pilot program means learning what does and does not work for the people they are trying to serve.
“Pilots aren’t about just being successful, pilots are about understanding how something works on the ground and fixing it as you go. You should never expect perfection. What we need is to be able to allow people to do their jobs so we can figure out the best solution for serving people who have long been forgotten,” said Friedman.
U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan called the Restoration Center “a big deal.”
“What we are opening today is something that our community will benefit from for a long time,” said Trahan.
Trahan cited a significant amount of police officers’ time that is being spent on calls involving behavioral health issues.
“We have been criminalizing illness, and this venture starts to change that,” said Trahan.
“I was proud to use my first-ever round of community project funding to secure $1.6 million in federal funding to help get this off the ground,” Trahan said later.
City Manager Tom Golden said the people who work at the Restoration Center know that the people walking in are all the family of somebody.
“Nobody chose this for their child, nobody chose this for themselves,” said Golden.
Golden noted the change in attitudes towards addiction over the years.
“There was a time when addiction was their fault, and to some extent maybe there is some truth to that. But there was a time with mental health and addiction, where we turned away and looked away, and blamed that person for that, as opposed to helping,” said Golden. “Anybody here today drops right now … and starts to have an issue like a heart attack, everybody jumps into action. What the people in front of me do day to day, the real heroes, is to make sure people are protected. When mental health or substance abuse or something has taken somebody’s life over, the people in front of me now jump into action.”
The Restoration Center of Greater Lowell is located at 10 Technology Drive in Lowell. For more information, visit vinfen.org/services/restoration-center, call the main line at 833-360-3655 or the crisis line at 978-674-6744.