October 14, 2025

Guest columnist Jennifer Dieringer: Compassionate collaboration for our community

BY Jennifer DieringerDaily Hampshire Gazette

In 2021, following the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, the city of Northampton answered the call to change traditional policing by establishing the Northampton Policing Review Commission. A key recommendation from the commission led to the establishment of the Division of Community Care (DCC), created under the umbrella of the city’s Department of Health and Human Services. Its creation was a bold effort to develop an alternative to a police response where community members’ needs are rooted in mental health, substance use, homelessness and social inequity. As the managing attorney of Community Legal Aid’s Hampshire County office, which partners and collaborates with DCC, I was delighted to attend its two-year anniversary celebration the end of last month.

Entering its third year, DCC has already done remarkable, trauma-informed work in collaboration with first responders, providers, and community partners. In the words of its director, Donaven Gibbs, DCC “…means compassion, it means showing up for people where they are with the right kind of help.” The DCC provides the help that Mr. Gibbs describes in a variety of ways. While DCC has achieved its presenting purpose, being fully integrated into 911 dispatch to provide unarmed emergency response to crises involving mental health and substance use, it helps in two other critical ways. DCC also engages in community outreach, working to establish trusting relationships with the homeless population so it can provide needed support. Finally, DCC welcomes people to its downtown headquarters, where community responders provide a warm and welcoming place for people seeking shelter and support. They assist walk-ins with paperwork needed to obtain benefits and services, and are instrumental in connecting people in need to city based agencies that provide critical services. Community Legal Aid (CLA) is one such agency.

Community Legal Aid is the non-profit civil legal aid program that provides free services to the low-income and elderly residents of western and central Massachusetts. In 2024, with funding from the city of Northampton through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), CLA and DCC formed a partnership wherein DCC can make direct referrals to CLA’s advocacy team, which specializes in a variety of civil legal areas, including housing, benefits, re-entry services, domestic violence, and disability law. After the referral is made, CLA provides expedited consultations, advice, or legal representation. This project allows for a streamlined approach for DCC’s visitors to access CLA services which they may not have even been aware of if not for DCC’s community responders. Through this collaboration, CLA is able to remedy legal problems, stabilize and secure housing, access critical state and federal benefits, and generally ameliorate the devastating effects that poverty, mental illness, and substance use can have on an individual.

Just one example of the collaborative work between DCC and CLA began in housing court, when a community responder introduced one of DCC’s visitors to me. I was there providing services to tenants facing eviction through CLA”s “lawyer for the day” program, and “Mr. B”, a low- income tenant using a wheelchair and suffering from a traumatic brain injury, was being evicted. After talking to Mr. B, it became clear that he had previously lost his Section 8 housing voucher, which caused his rent to skyrocket, leading to his non-payment eviction. CLA’s housing lawyer and case manager were able to restore Mr. B’s Section 8 voucher, secure funds to pay the back rent, and stabilize the tenancy. A critical piece of CLA’s success was the ability to work collaboratively with DCC’s community responder who had established a trusting relationship with Mr. B.

This is just one of the many success stories that have resulted from this collaboration. Since the project’s launch about a year and a half ago, DCC has referred 73 people facing a wide variety of legal challenges to CLA. CLA is grateful to the city of Northampton for this visionary and groundbreaking program. As Sen. Jo Comerford remarked at the ceremony, “This is not a path forward that many have taken. It is a path that is being built by cities like Northampton.” Community Legal Aid is thrilled to be working in tandem with DCC’s excellent, dedicated team of community responders, wishes the DCC a very happy anniversary, and looks forward to a future of collaborative efforts to help our community’s most vulnerable members.

Jennifer Dieringer is the managing attorney of the Hampshire and Franklin County offices of Community Legal Aid.