Opioid settlement funds help city reach out to those in need
May 09, 2024Shea Smiley is the city’s Housing, Health and Human Services manager. Her position, created last year, helps aid those in need.
Kitsap County food bank takes a cue from Gig Harbor
May 02, 2024Walking through the rooms of Bremerton Foodline, executive director Cori Kauk describes her grand vision for the currently under-remodel food bank: A new, inviting floor space for shoppers, more accessible entry points, and redoing a shed out back. By comparison, her latest project seems quite small. It needs only a reusable shopping bag and a
911 meets 988 at emergency call center serving Gig Harbor area
Apr 29, 2024As the largest 911 call center in Washington, a growing number of the nearly 1 million calls South Sound 911 handles annually involve someone experiencing a mental or behavioral health crisis. Aiming to better support these callers, the emergency call center launched a first-of-its-kind model that will bring counselors from the state’s 988 mental health
Making the case for a new approach to substance-use treatment
Apr 24, 2024For decades, research into substance use treatment has found that a rigid focus on abstinence-only models has caused just a small fraction of those in need to seek treatment. But as the opioid epidemic surges in Kitsap and across the country, Wayne Swanson, director of Subacute Recovery Services at Kitsap Mental Health Services, says providers