Health and Welfare in the Town Budget

By Ruth Melville

Greenwoods Counseling Referrals, Inc., has been in operation since 1992, working to provide high quality and affordable mental health care to the people of Litchfield County.

The organization does exactly what its name suggests. Once a potential client has contacted them for help, Greenwoods provides a mental health assessment, at no charge if necessary, and then refers the client to one of its network of 130 clinicians throughout the county.

As Greenwoods’ executive director John Simoncelli puts it, “We provide a unique service because we do the work for you.” A client doesn’t need to know in advance what their insurance covers because Greenwoods will figure that out and, if necessary, help find ways to make up any gaps. Once the assessment staff have determined what kind of treatment is needed, Greenwoods will match the client with the most appropriate clinician, taking into account the therapist’s areas of expertise—“Not every therapist treats every disorder,” Simoncelli says—and where he or she lives, so that no one needs to travel too far to meet with a therapist. The goal is to set up a sustainable relationship so that people can get into treatment and stay in treatment.

For most of their 25 years in operation, Greenwoods did only assessments and referrals, but in the past year and a half, since Simoncelli took over as executive director, they have expanded their range of services. The most important change is that they are now able to offer more counseling services in their own offices in Litchfield, with three licensed clinicians on staff.

Greenwoods is also now more involved in wider community efforts. For example, they work in close collaboration with the Litchfield Country Opiate Task Force, a joint project set up five years ago under the direction of the McCall Center for Behavioral Health and Charlotte Hungerford Hospital. Simoncelli, who is a member of the Opiate Task Force’s executive committee, says that the task force was the first in Connecticut to take on the issue of opioid addiction.

Thanks to this collaboration, and to their expanded in-house services, Greenwoods can provide medication-assisted treatment for opioid addiction, coupled with psychotherapy. A client can come to the Greenwoods’ offices, receive their medication (Suboxone, or buprenorphine) from an APRN (advanced practice registered nurse) on staff, and then meet with one of their three full-time therapists—all in the same location.

In addition, for the past two years Greenwoods has been collaborating with local schools to offer assessment and referral services to students and their families. The intention is to help school administrators spot students struggling with mental health issues and get them early intervention and treatment.

Greenwoods also has a subsidy program to help people in need pay for their treatment. If a client is eligible for the subsidy program, he or she agrees to pay for a portion of treatment, Greenwoods pays for a portion, and the network clinician agrees to a reduced fee. In this way, the client, clinician and Greenwoods work together to get clients the care they need.

In addition to their primary work, there are a host of other mental health programs that Greenwoods participates in, including offering mental health first aid training, building a database to identity the most common mental health issues in the county, hosting workshops on addiction and trauma, and working with the Project Mitigate to offer Narcan trainings for clinicians and members of the community.

Greenwoods’ work is funded by a combination of private and community grants. Norfolk is one of the towns in Litchfield Country that includes the organization in its town budget. Last year the town gave $3,000.

In a letter to Norfolk’s Board of Selectman thanking the town for its contribution, Simoncelli calls Greenwoods “the best kept secret in the country for the past 25 years,” but he is actively working to increase public awareness of the services they provide. He also thinks that it’s “important for towns that contribute to know where their money is going. A good chunk of the money goes right back into the community.” This helps the clients, of course, but it also helps the providers who live and work in the area.

Greenwoods (which is nonsectarian) is located in Saint Michael’s Church, 25 South Street, Litchfield. If people have questions, Simoncelli says, they just have to reach out and call them at 860-567-4437. Greenwoods is not, it should be noted, a crisis center. If you need immediate help, please call, toll-free, the crisis hotline for western Connecticut: 888-447-3339.