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1 <br /> ORANGE COUNTY <br /> BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS <br /> ACTION AGENDA ITEM ABSTRACT <br /> Meeting Date: October 8, 2020 <br /> Action Agenda <br /> Item No. 2 <br /> SUBJECT: New Street Outreach and Harm Reduction Program <br /> DEPARTMENT: Criminal Justice Resource <br /> Department; Housing and <br /> Community Development <br /> Department <br /> ATTACHMENT(S): INFORMATION CONTACT: <br /> Power Point Caitlin Fenhagen: 919-245-2303 <br /> Corey Root: 919-245-2496 <br /> Emila Sutton: 919-245-2490 <br /> PURPOSE: To share information about a new grant-funded county initiative supported through <br /> a collaboration between the Criminal Justice Resource Department and the Housing and <br /> Community Development Department with the Partnership to End Homelessness. <br /> BACKGROUND: Since 2017, each year people with lived experience of homelessness, <br /> housing and homeless service providers, the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness, <br /> and other community stakeholders have identified a street outreach program as a gap in the <br /> Orange County homeless service system (latest gap analysis update from 2019). Orange <br /> County has had proven success with a street outreach program, connecting people living <br /> unsheltered with services and housing, administered by Housing for New Hope -- this program <br /> ended when Housing for New Hope ended work in Orange County in 2016. <br /> In April 2019, over thirty community stakeholders from the criminal justice system, healthcare, <br /> behavioral health system, and housing came together to participate in the Orange County <br /> Sequential Intercept Mapping Workshop facilitated by the North Carolina Department of Health <br /> and Human Services. A systems intercept map and Final Report were created (SIM Final <br /> Report) and one of the identified community gaps that emerged from this process was the need <br /> to divert people who are high utilizers of the courts, health care, and homelessness systems <br /> from further criminal justice contact. <br /> At the same time, stakeholders from the criminal justice system including law enforcement, the <br /> District Attorney's office, the Orange County Criminal Justice Resource Department (CJRD), <br /> and criminal justice reform advocates are seeking to expand harm reduction deflection efforts in <br /> Orange County. The current pre-arrest diversion program administered by the CJRD (OC PAD) <br /> allows for law enforcement to divert first-offenders, but the OC PAD Advisory Committee, <br /> District Attorney's Office and all law enforcement chiefs have endorsed proceeding with a plan <br />