After a shake-up in the General Assistance program, the Town of Freeport decided to relaunch the program within a new paramedicine role.

The community response specialist – a new position that the Town hopes to fill soon – will take on the responsibilities of General Assistance and more. The position will replace nonprofit Freeport Community Service’s implementation of General Assistance after it terminated its contract this year, citing concerns of increased need, complexity of needs and having little capacity at the center.

Town Manager Sophia Wilson and newly appointed Fire and Rescue Chief Robert Bernard likened the new position to a community paramedic.

“In (the EMS) realm, we have many members that are looking beyond the ends of their career, and they go to nursing school or they go work on psychology degrees or these types of things,” Bernard said. “So what we’re looking for is that perfect niche – that person that’s maybe at the end of their career and they’re looking less to the hustle bustle on an ambulance and more of the community service side of things.”

With some workshopping of the job description and taking some inspiration from Topsham’s community paramedic role, Freeport officials landed on the new role to both implement the General Assistance program for eight to 10 hours a week and provide other services to the town for the remaining hours of the full-time position. The specialist, who will be a trained EMS worker, would also work within Freeport Fire and Rescue to provide crisis intervention, community health education, outreach and case management, according to the job description.

The new role will serve underserved communities, including those who may not necessarily seek General Assistance.

“What it comes down to is, essentially, our person could go into someone’s home if they had mobility issues,” Bernard said. “We could actually go and draw blood, literally transport that blood to the hospital, have it treated and tested and the doctors get the reports. And that person never has to leave their home.”

Wilson said that this new role can target the elderly population – a community she said is underserved in Freeport – with preventative care and save use of emergency resources such as ambulances down the road.

“That is better for the budget, that is better for the community in general, and everybody knows that maintenance is much better than emergency, right?” Wilson said. “… The more we can move from those urgent crises into planned, proactive care and intervention, I think the better, happier everybody’s going to be. And when someone’s having a crisis that has nothing to do mental health or any of that, we’ll have resources available for them, which is key.”

New General Assistance era amid a housing crisis

The hiring process marks the next chapter of the General Assistance program in Freeport, which FCS hosted starting in the fall of 2021 after being approached by the town. The organization passed the baton to Town Hall on Sept. 1 this year.

Wilson said that while FCS offered to host the program beyond its end date in August to help transition, the town opted to take over as scheduled. She said that the clerk’s office has been doing an “incredible job” holding down the program since the transition in early September.

“I felt like it was really important to make a clear cutoff for people seeking services. I didn’t want there to be confusion – but also I think with FCS there was probably a model that was steeped a little bit in social service,” Wilson said. “We’re, right now, doing more of a municipal model, which does not make it better, it’s just a little bit different way of looking at it.”

Wilson said that while she was not super familiar with the exact details and nature of how the program was implemented at FCS, she said it was clear FCS was focused on helping residents find solutions and described FCS’s service as a “wonderful” for the community.

When run on a more municipal level, Wilson said that residents seeking assistance have to put in a little more leg work after being given resources. For instance, she said that a recent applicant for General Assistance did not currently have a rental nor a hotel but asked for housing assistance. The town gave this applicant resources to reach out to to help navigate their situation but could not find those accommodations for them, she said.

For Wilson, Freeport has always been proactive in terms of meeting the needs of the community in a compassionate way. In terms of General Assistance, she believes need has grown for a variety of reasons – one being that Freeport is an expensive place to live and that housing is hard to come by in this region.

“I think people would love to live in Freeport, but there is no supply, which makes the cost really expensive,” Wilson said.

FCS Executive Director Sarah Lundin said FCS’s implementation of the program was highly involved. The organization gave people the tools to figure out a situation while also helping them through the process. Given the nature of FCS as a community service resource, Lundin said there was no other way to administer the program.

“Just inherently in all that we do here – if there’s a need, we are going to try our darnedest to meet it,” said Lundin, who noted that a majority of applications were for housing assistance.

But this approach proved challenging as needs grew more complex over the years. When FCS got started with the program, it received about $1,000 a month from the town with the expectation that implementing the program would only take a few hours a week. 2021 was also the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when emergency considerations such as the state’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program helped offset the cost of living, Lundin said.

That first year, FCS only saw one to two applications a month. Starting in 2022, however, applications steadily grew for many reasons, one being the need to help the New Mainer families with food and supplies when they were relocated to Freeport. The Emergency Rental Assistance Program also ended later that year, she said.

With a tight housing stock in the region and little capacity at shelters like Tedford Housing in Brunswick, housing assistance needs rose, though Lundin noted that housing insecurity has been an issue long plaguing Midcoast communities.

“Fortunately, for the families that were at the hotels, it was pretty straightforward – it was just the volume of folks that we were seeing,” Lundin said. ” … But what we were seeing this spring – I would say probably maybe half of 2023 and definitely into 2024 – very, very complex situations: no resources within the community to stay at short-term, hotels weren’t willing to work with us, couldn’t find shelter at any of the local shelters because they’re all full.”

FCS received some additional funding along the way, including a one-time allotment of $37,000 in 2022 that Lundin said was to acknowledge the increased work the organization was doing – and eventually increased its General Assistance funding from $1,000 a month to $2,000.

But with many resources gone or limited, Lundin said people who were surviving in the pandemic are now struggling, creating more difficult scenarios for FCS and assistance seekers to navigate. This year, the FCS program averaged seven to eight applications a month that would sometimes demand over 50 hours a week to conduct outreach and find places for people to turn to, she said.

“I also think that the situations that people are presenting with have additional complexities [given] that resources to support them through are no longer here as well,” Lundin said. “With substance use, with untreated mental health – to get a case worker even to help support you as you navigate not having a home or whatever that scenario is – to get connected with that is really challenging.”

Those seeking General Assistance can visit freeportmaine.com or email GA@freeportmaine.com. Those interested in the community response specialist role can email csparks@freepormaine.com.