The Prescription Opioid Settlement Distribution Commission is working on a strategic plan for future allocation of funding.
The commission discussed the need for a strategic plan at its quarterly meeting on Monday afternoon.
Attorney General Kathy Jennings says she and Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long met with Social Contract, a solutions company that also works with Governor John Carney’s Group Violence Intervention program in Wilmington.
Coordinator of Wilmington's Community Public Safety Initiative Debra Mason voiced some hesitation over contracting out.
“We have so many different people at the table that I feel like have the potential to develop a strategic plan that I’m not quite sure why we would put more money towards an outside agency when I believe that money could go towards people who are actually doing the work," Mason says.
Jennings says nothing is set in stone – they are waiting for a proposal from Social Contract – and the commission may opt not to ask a third party for help at all.
“The commission may decide after a proposal is presented that, ‘no we don’t need this, we can do this ourselves," she says. "But it also provides a roadmap for whoever is doing it, let’s do it right.”
Jennings says creating a strategic plan includes collecting more data like where overdoses are happening, and what is needed to abate them, to better understand what resources to send where.
“Are they transportation, housing, are they supplemental mobile clinics that would administer MAT?" Jennings says. "Are they help with residential housing? Are they help with recovery centers? And so the problem becomes pretty gosh darn complex at that point because what is needed, where is specific and it's ongoing.”
Jennings says it will be up to the commission to decide if a company’s proposal, be it Social Contract or another, is worth investing in, or if its own members are capable.
