Funding for two social service initiatives were unanimously approved by the Board of Selectmen Monday night, Mar. 16, including a new survey aimed at evaluating mental health needs in Wilton.
Along with $15,000 for the survey, the BOS also approved allocating $12,500 to fund a second year of the Cartwheel counseling service, which is being used by Wilton Public Schools. Both initiatives will be funded by money in the town’s Opioid Fund.
The Opioid Fund is money first allotted to state municipalities in 2023 through nationwide legal settlements with opioid manufacturers, shippers and retailers. According to Wilton Social Services Director Stephanie Rowe, Wilton’s current Opioid Fund balance is $175,945, with approximately $190,000 more expected to trickle in over the next 12 years.
Rowe said that she and Wilton Police Deputy Chief Rob Cipolla had wondered about the best way to spend those funds, which are earmarked for addiction prevention, treatment, harm reduction or recovery. While they said the definition can be broad on what qualifies, they decided it would be valuable to do a community needs assessment similar to one that was done in New Canaan.
“Our thought is when people use opioids or something like that, it really gets back to mental health,” Rowe said. “Because when you use an opioid you’re trying to regulate yourself. You’re trying to regulate to get back to your baseline, so if we don’t know what people’s baselines are, we don’t know how to help.”
Rowe said New Canaan used the Fairfield-based Chanana Consulting to execute two surveys — one aimed at adults and the other at young people — each of which will cost $7,500.
“What we’re looking to do with this community needs assessment is to kind of get a feel for what the local needs are,” Cipolla said. “Anecdotally all of our agencies, whether it’s the Police Department, Social Services, Board of Ed[ucation], we can have an idea of what our community needs are, but this gets the input directly from the community so we can be more strategic in using these funds we have now, as well as the funds that are coming in the future.”
While offering support for the allocation, First Selectman Toni Boucher pointed out that Wilton’s Social Services does help pay for direct counseling services and such, noting that these funds could also go toward that.
“This seems to make sense,” she observed. “You need to know how you want to serve.”
Boucher said, however, that the 2,000 responses needed to make the assessment valid, according to the company, was an impressively high number to shoot for.
Rowe said, however, that the hope is to get the word out through local newspapers, the Wilton Library, and to engage people at places like the Village Market.
Rowe said that she was going to get a working board of people together to help plan out the questions for both the adult and youth surveys.
“I think we’d all be interested in what the future results would be,” Boucher said.
Virtual Therapy for Younger Students
Rowe also advocated for a second year with Cartwheel Care, Inc., a mental-health resource consultant that connects younger at-risk students with virtual therapists. The $12,500 cost can provide the service for up to 25 students.
“I have met with the [Wilton] schools and they are having a good turnabout of this program,” Rowe said. “Last year the caveat for this was it was all online but it is hard to find in-person referrals, so it’s not 100% what we want, but it’s working so far.”
“By the third year, I’ll talk with the Board of Ed and see where they want to go with this,” she said, noting that the community assessment will help determine whether they want to continue with this group next year.
Boucher noted that last year the school system had advocated for them trying the program, implying that there was still a feeling of “wait and see” as to its effectiveness.
“I know that they’re being very careful about making sure we’re getting something useful out of the program,” Boucher said.
Rowe explained that the district used Cartwheel last year for middleschool-aged students, but with the increase in need to address behavioral issues in younger students, and the difficulty of finding available and affordable clinicians for that age group, she and school officials were hoping to service younger students this year.
“It’s very difficult to find a licensed person that’s not like a million dollars for a 10 year old. Even Positive Directions [a former therapeutic provider Wilton worked with] was, I believe, [age] 12 and above. So Cartwheel has that, which is great, because it’s very hard to find in Fairfield County for people to work with that [younger] age group,” Rose said.
Selectman Matt Raimondi took note that the providers were also receiving insurance payments as well as the fixed cost of $500 per student.
“This feels very expensive for me,” Raimondi said.
Second Selectman Ross Tartell, however, argued that therapy can be costly, speaking in support of that additional amount.
“This is cheap,” Tartell said. “If you go over to Silver Hill for the program that they’ve got going, it’s five or 600 bucks just to walk in the door.”
Rowe noted that she did not believe there was a cap on the number of sessions, and all would be included in the $500 per student cost. “The average was seven sessions,” she said.