Portland service provider wants more outreach and communication to fight fentanyl crisis

Portland is at about the halfway point in its tri-governmental 90-day emergency declaration on fentanyl.

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — People from all backgrounds are now working together as they tackle the fentanyl crisis and outreach workers say it’s going to take law enforcement, service providers, and local government working together to really fight this. For a long time, many of these groups have done separate work to fight the fentanyl crisis, but now, many of them are also working together to figure out a solution.

“Bringing us together in a room so that we can say, ‘hey, I have this, I have this capability. I’m just missing this piece and I know you actually have that piece, can we bring that together and make this work?’” PDX Saints Love executive director Kristle Delihanty said.

This week, government leaders, law enforcement, and service providers came together to see how they can help each other. Providers like PDX Saints Love say that while they work daily with those in the throes of addiction, more can be done, especially between the state, City of Portland, and Multnomah County – like creating an open referral process.

“The referral process for most of the services across the city are extremely siloed and so the referrals belong to contracted providers with the city. Not all of us who are doing this work are contracted with the city to do this work,” Delihanty said. “Having those, those housing systems, outreach systems and the health, that community health and the public health sector come together and all of us have access to those same referral systems and those same shelter beds, those same detox beds, is going to be one of the number one things that are going to help us.”

Delihanty says another part of the gap is communicating what areas are solely in need of outreach beyond Downtown Portland, like East County. 

On Thursday, KOIN 6 News got a look at the Rapid Needs Assessment Task Force, matching law enforcement with those doing outreach.

“We call the hotline that we have or someone from a nonprofit is dispatched out here and a team hopefully to talk to that person,” Portland Police Ofc. David Baer told KOIN 6 News.

Delihanty says, ultimately, it’ll take combined efforts like these to get a hold on this crisis.

“We are going to need collaboration. We’re never going to get out of this unless we take every piece to the puzzle and bring it together,” Delihanty said.

The 90-day unified fentanyl emergency declaration between the state, city, and county is about halfway through, but officials say much of the work being done during this timeframe will continue long after.