Episode #1: Violence Intervention in Hartford | Hartford Communities That Care

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Episode Transcript

Jason: Hello and welcome.

Today we are joined by the Hartford Community That Cares organization based in Hartford, Connecticut, and they engage in violence intervention and prevention and creating drug free communities.

We are joined today by three folks from Hartford Community That Cares, including Andrew Woods, the Executive Director, Shenell Benjamin, Director of the Hartford Care Response Team, and Ty Bynum, a Sr Crisis Intervention Specialist. Thank you very much for joining us today. It’s a real pleasure to have you all here.

And I think to get started, Andrew, if you could just tell us about Hartford Community That Cares, how you got started, and what your focus is.

Andrew (Executive Director): Yes, certainly. Well, thanks again for this opportunity to connect with you guys on your platform and we are looking forward to the work and partnership that we’re going to be having with Beacon.

In 1998, we actually started the organization as a mentoring organization, but by 2004, we pivoted, in addition to mentoring, we pivoted towards crisis intervention 24/7 response to support victims of violent crime. And primarily, we established at the time the first hospital violence intervention program in the state of Connecticut, or what we call a hospital linked violence intervention program.

This is where when a call comes through for a victim of violent crime, our agency is called to connect with the families and victims and make sure that when they’re discharged from the hospital, provided they survive, that our case management and our team follow up with them with wraparound service supports.

And so as I mentioned earlier, we’re a 24/7, 365 day response team. It’s been that way since we started back in 2004, and since then we have served over 2000 victims of violent crime here in the greater Hartford area.

Jason: Fantastic. That’s just incredible work that you’re doing. How did you come into this?

How did you go from no program, no organization existing to get involved in this, and then to really take on all the activities?

Andrew (Executive Director): Well, pretty much there was a need. As I indicated earlier, we are primarily doing prevention work, leadership development work that we still currently do today with one of our other programs now called the Greater Hartford Youth Leadership Academy.

But unfortunately during that time working with middle and high school young people doing the prevention, intervention and leadership development work, there was also a spike in youth violence, particularly gun violence, with young people in the seventh and eighth and middle and high school age range.

And typically what would happen is that if a victim of gun violence, a young person was shot, they obviously had to go to a hospital. And it was during that time that we noticed that when young people were admitted to the hospital, many friends, anywhere up to 200 folks would land at the hospital just to see what’s going on, friends, family members, et cetera. And the hospital would go to lockdown because they weren’t too sure. They weren’t sure exactly who the family members were or who the friends were. And there were safety concerns. And what we decided with the hospital was say, “Hey, look, why don’t you do this? Anytime there’s a shooting victim that comes in, give us a call and we’ll come down and we’ll work with you to sort through who’s who.” But also we wanted to make sure that they got access to a private room to where they can get updates from nursing staff, from doctors, and then to make sure that we were able to follow up and support those victims and their families afterwards.

But really it emerged out of a need to make sure that victims and their families were receiving the support that they needed, at the hospital, in the hospital setting and at crime scenes.

Jason: And what gave you the experience or the know-how to be able to get involved in this? It seems like there wasn’t any kind of formal training. You just recognized a need and got involved but clearly you had some experience and know-how to be able to get involved in an effective way.

Andrew (Executive Director): Well, my background is that I have a public health background in addition to a social work background.

I’ve always done work from a public health standpoint with dealing with issues around drug dependency dealing with HIV and AIDS at that time, which was significant during the early, late nineties, early nineties, late eighties. And so understanding public health practices and principles, and also understanding what some of the best practices are related to dealing with at risk youth and, young people, especially those victimized.

It didn’t take much for me to generate and think about what some effective strategies would be to address this issue.

Jason: Did you have any collaboration with other practitioners or were you on your own working this?

Andrew (Executive Director): Primarily, you know, with the schools, with law enforcement, with schools, with the hospitals, with other service providers, mental health providers, medical providers other youth development organizations that we’re working with young people.

So pretty much, you know, when you’re building anything, you really want to take a look at the universe of who else is out there that can actually support and sustain in young people and especially around safety issues, and also help to improve their quality.

Jason: Right. So it started, I imagine with you and some colleagues being involved in direct intervention, but then it got to the point where you launched a dedicated Hartford Care Response Team that Shenell is now the Director of, how did you go from single interventions to putting together a full proper response team?

Andrew (Executive Director): Well, that took some time because initially there wasn’t a lot of investments in this area. And even now there’s challenges. The investments are just beginning to trickle into this industry, if you will. And so it’s really volunteerism, it was really committed individuals like myself, a gentleman by the name of Brother Carl Hardrick, another gentleman named Chuck Cummins. It was really just a group of individuals who were already embedded in the community, who had an interest in making sure that folks were safe and that they wanted to make sure that they had the best opportunities possible. So really calling and relying on colleagues and friends.

Plus other volunteers, we were able to eventually build out a program along with board members and advisors to be able to create something that will eventually attract the resources needed to sustain these efforts over time.

Jason: Excellent. So Shenell, now you are the director of the Hartford Care Response Team, and if you could walk us through what does that consist of? What makes it a formal team as opposed to a collection of people who come in every once in a while or however it may work?

Shenell Benjamin (Director Hartford Care Direct Response Team): Well, what makes us a formal team is that we have the crisis interventionists, which includes Ty, as well as additional members as part of that team.

And then we have the case managers that work together to ensure that the wraparound services that are needed are provided to these families that are in need. Which includes connecting them to nursing care, to primary care physicians, to assisting with employment or any advocacy for that matter. So overall it provides a different setup that a lot of people aren’t quite used to receiving.

Jason: What are the official roles involved in the team? You mentioned the interventionists, with one being Ty who we will get to in a moment, but also case managers and who else, what are the formal roles that you have?

Shenell Benjamin (Director Hartford Care Direct Response Team): You have me as Director, in which I oversee the case managers as well as the intervention specialists. And then you have the intervention specialists, which Ty will get deeper into, but they respond to the hospital and to the crime scene. They respond 24/7, 365, and the information that they get from that crime scene they bring over to me and the case management team as well, and we debrief on whatever that incident is and we reach out to the family within 24 to 48 hours, depending on if it’s a during the week event or over the weekend. Probably do that first thing Monday morning. We debrief on the incident and then make that call to the family.

And the importance of the debrief is to ensure that we communicate, we take the temperature of the family to see, you know, we may be dealing with a homicide or we may be dealing with a very tough situation in which the family may have requested just additional space at that time. And to call them, probably not that Monday, maybe that Tuesday.

So that debrief and that communication plays a significant role in making sure that we follow through and execute on the needs of that family. It shows that we’re listening, and then that case when we schedule a home visit or an office visit, if that’s what they prefer and we connect with that family, see what services they need, and that case manager and that intervener that actually responded to that hospital they meet with the family and just take off from there with whatever services or needs that they said they would need in order to start that healing process from that traumatic event that happened to them.

Jason: Great. Thank you. Thank you for sharing all that.

Ty, I guess it would be really useful to have you walk us through how does this actually happen, right? The moment the call comes in that you’re needed all the way to the resolution, or at least until you are able to pass it off, how do those steps happen?

Ty Bynum (Crisis Intervention Specialist): Typically what would happen is we get a phone call from the hospital alerting us that we had a victim, a crime. Maybe it is a gunshot victim, a stabbing victim, a physical assault, anything pertaining to a blunt force or injury, and Mr. Woods will call myself and alert me about the hospital and the situation or circumstance, then I would reach out to the team and alert everyone that we have to meet at the hospital for the circumstance.

And our goal is to get to the hospital within 15 minutes or under, we arrive at the hospital setting. We greet the security guards. They’re familiar with who we are and what we do at this point. We go inside, meet with the charge nurse, exchange information as far as demographics, male, female, race, gender, et cetera.

Then once it’s almost safe to do so, we have an opportunity to meet the victim bedside and at the time of meeting the victim bedside we’re feeling out how they feel first before it’s bigger than just providing the service because even if they decline wanting services, we’ll still stay until they’re either discharged or the family feels that they are safe enough to take over.

So, aside from the provision of services, we try to assure emotional support for the victims and let them know you have individuals that’s here to advocate for you. May be for law enforcement, the nurses, or family for that matter. So we develop a relationship with the victim at bedside, and then we have other team members actually in the front meeting room to be with the arriving friends and families.

And like Mr. Woods stated earlier, you never really know how many family or friends you may encounter. It could go from one husband to being thirty family members outside. Our team that’s out front usually meets with the family, finds individuals who they can contact with collected information just in case the family may also need some type of wraparound services and supports, and they get a general idea of the circumstances of the individual, what they would need upon release, meaning they may need a relocation, they may want clinical therapy, they may want other services to help not only themselves, but their family. So once we are completing those tasks, we take all the demographic information, all of the information that took place at the hospital scene, like Shenell mentioned, the temperature of the family, the attitudes – we document all of that. Then we get it to Shenell the same night. Detail typed up everything they need and then the case team take the information and they perform magic like no other. So that’s how it goes from the initial phone call all the way down to when Shenell gets it.

And she already, when it’s the detail about the protocols that the case management team does, and that’s the house visits with the interveners. When we get there, nine times out of ten, if not all ten, the victim, if they’re able to remember because they just went through a traumatic shot or sometimes they’re medicated, so they may not always remember who they spoke to.

That’s why it’s important we build with the family too. So in the event that the victim doesn’t remember us we have an aunt, a mother, a sister, a brother, or somebody who remembers us being there. And once that warm handoff is passed off and we could work with the case management team to give them the services, it becomes a family oriented type of process.

You learn to develop these relationships. You learn to be completely transparent and empathetic, and it becomes more than a call of duty.

Jason: I imagine you’re walking into some really tense situations. How do you prepare yourself for that? What’s in the top of your mind as you’re walking into, you know, Andrew mentioned up to 200 people showing up at the hospital or, even if it’s just 30, those emotions are running high and, you know, fingers are being pointed. What’s your state of mind? What are you telling yourself to stay on top of things and make sure that you’re able to both deliver the services that are needed, but also keep yourself safe too. How does that work?

Ty Bynum (Crisis Intervention Specialist): I’ll credit that to three things. The first personal experience with heightened situations, risky circumstances, or even when death is around.

Just me being in those certain circumstances throughout my lifetime and just knowing how to not be numb, but to put certain things on the back burner. I think that I developed that which helped me a lot.

The second thing is the training provided by not only Mr. Woods and the best practices that we often study, but just knowing what works without having to do too much changing.

And third, just the personal intention and wanting to be a part of the solution and wanting to be a part of the healing process. Those three elements keep me grounded every single call.

Jason: That’s fantastic stuff. I mean, that’s really right to the core.

About this training, Andrew, can you talk more about the training that you provide? I imagine this is a lot of training that you developed yourself?

Andrew (Executive Director): Well, I would say yes and no to some extent. I mean, clearly when you’re early into this, you know, what you really want is that we value the perspective and the expertise of colleagues across the country.

So even early on when we were developing the program, I really relied on looking at what other folks were doing across the country. Chicago and Boston were my two primary cities that I had looked to because I knew some of the work that they were doing. And so really it wasn’t about reinventing the wheel, it was really about seeing what best practices or strategies that they’re implementing there that might be helpful with us.

Obviously, you want to adapt it to your local condition and clearly because of what you know about your own environment. But over the years, it continues to be a refinement of our own strategies based on what we’ve learned personally. Shenell in her role, she continues to refine her strategies on how to engage, how to support families.

And same thing with Ty and their teams. It’s always an evolution, the practices evolve based on, you know, just history, based on circumstances, based on, what you’ve experienced.

But we’re also a part of a national group of programs, or folks that do hospital violence intervention programs, street level intervention programs, where there are best practices that are out there that are recognized federally through our grant and federal funders, state funders. Best practices based on research and implementation of similar programs.

And so we attend conferences, we engage in ongoing professional development with our own in-service trainings. It’s something that our staff do independently in their own time or on staff time, as well as certainly when we attend local or regional or statewide conferences to connect with colleagues.

So, you know, certainly it’s all about making sure you still connect with what other folks are doing, and that also helps you, again, keep your tools sharp so to speak.

Jason: What is the name of the national network for anyone who might be interested in learning more?

Andrew (Executive Director): It’s the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention, HAVI for short. The HAVI, the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention is our National Trade Association. And so anyone that wants to do this work, HAVI is really the go-to source to understand hospital violence intervention programs.

They can tell you what does it take to create an organization, what does it take to maintain one? What do you need to do? Bottom line is that they are our network and the go-to trade association for those that do this work.

Jason: Excellent, thank you. I want to get back to you about those two points about how to create one and how to maintain one. But before I do that, I’d like to ask Shenell, could you talk a little bit about the partnerships that you have to maintain to ensure that you’re able to deliver the services? I mean, I know you had mentioned the hospital, the police department, I’m sure you’re also involved with you know, churches and other community organizations.

How do you establish your care response team? As a respective, respected and authoritative organization that is able to deliver services. What kind of partnerships does that take and how do you maintain those?

Shenell Benjamin (Director Hartford Care Direct Response Team): Well, first and foremost since we are a community based organization, our first partnership is the community.They’re number one.

Besides that, we’ve got the fire department, the hospital, and others. But we are also outside in the community, attending community events, talking to the individuals of the community, seeing how we can better the community that we’re a part of.

We’re not just a building here. We’re people here, we work here. We enjoy seeing children smiling and playing and so when the community gets to see us actually out in the community, then they know that there IS a community. You know, just like you would see your fire departments and you see your police officers and EMTs and everyone else, when you see them out active in the community there is a certain level of community building that you get.

Jason: That makes a lot of sense, very well said.

Ty, let’s say that there are folks out there who want to get involved, they want to be doing exactly what you do. What would you be looking for in the right type of person to take on the role that you’ve got?

If you were gonna go recruit more folks to join your team, what would you be looking for?

Ty Bynum (Crisis Intervention Specialist): That’s a good question.

I personally feel like there’s no cookie cutter answer to that because everybody in the communities have something to offer. There’s no absolute list of qualifications that you need to meet to do this work.

You just have to care. Once you care everything is going to find a way to take care of itself, because in these communities, once someone realizes someone cares, it opens up the fence for so many opportunities, because essentially everybody wants to just know someone cares.

So it’s not really a list of qualifications as far as being on time or being strong, like, those things are great, but the number one quality, if you will, that overrides all of that is just being caring and being genuine and sincere with intention.

If you have an intention to be sincere and genuine and caring for these individuals, I have no issues working with you.

Jason: Pretty straightforward. That makes it easy, but it’s also really succinct in terms of what you’re looking for.

So let’s get back if I can Andrew, to what you were talking about. Let’s say there’s a community out there that wants to do exactly what you’re doing and they’re starting from ground zero, right? They’ve got nothing other than the inspiration. And as Ty mentioned, they care, they want to help. What would you recommend to them? Broad stroke steps that they’ve gotta do to get up and running?

Andrew (Executive Director): Well, I think it, you know, it boils down to one, establishing relationships and partnerships.

And so really if you don’t have those two things, then you really can’t expect to start or maintain or sustain anything, quite frankly because this whole effort, this program, these services are all based on trust. And gaining trust from those that you want to serve and support and help. And so if anyone that wants to engage in this work really, um, need to be individuals or organizations that already have established a network or a degree of trust within the community and among providers, or be willing to put the time in to establish those.

And so both can happen, but it is not an overnight deal. They need to be prepared for that. They also need to be prepared for setbacks. They need to be prepared for the ever ongoing challenges that creating and sustaining and even enhancing these kinds of initiatives comes with. And then it’s always a constant raising awareness of the value of the program so that you can continue to gain the kind of support that the community deserves, or your organization and the community deserves.

And this could all be frustrating, it can all be a challenge, but that’s also a part of it. And so really at the end of the day, if you really want to be a part of some of these movements, if you will, it really requires a great deal of resilience.

It requires a great deal of focus, discipline and being willing to check and also acknowledge the fact that some of this work can be frustrating, and then learn ways to deal with that frustration.

That’s really probably the best advice I can give anyone along those lines. And obviously, again, cultivate relationships among funders, among people who can support these programs and services through resources.

Jason: So you, raised a couple good points there that I’d like to just ask a bit more about. How do you demonstrate value to the community? I mean  it’s apparent just by talking with you the value that you bring. But we both know that when you’re going out talking to funders, you know they’re gonna want more concrete, quantifiable impact and what are those that you are normally sharing with them to say, this is how we can actually quantify our impact?

What are the results that you’re showing to them to convince them to fund your efforts?

Andrew (Executive Director): Primarily two things.

One, consistency. Okay. In that one, funders do not want to support anything that is just fly by night. They don’t want to fund and support projects and initiatives that just seem to pop up and then pop down, depending on whether or not a person gets the resources. The bottom line is that they really want to see whether you’re in this for the long haul and if you have a true commitment to it. That’s number one.

Number two, you gotta have the buy-in from the community to be able to basically validate you. You have to have stakeholders in the community that would validate the importance of the program.

And again, that goes back to relationships and partnerships in that if you have key stakeholders in the community that validate and are willing to put their names on the line to say testify to what you bring to the table. That’s another way to make lawmakers, who don’t want to necessarily hear a lot of data, they want to hear what the people think, they want to hear the stories.And so you gotta make sure that you’re also a part of that dynamic as well.

And then of course, the third thing is that clearly the data and your outcomes are important. They will want to see who and how many have you served, what were the outcomes? What can you demonstrate based on your data in terms of how effective you were with helping these families or individuals?

And that also takes time to generate. And it’s not as quick as one year or two years. Oftentimes it’s multiple years to be able to generate the data that can tell the story. Not only the story on your impact, but also the story that says that we’re in it for the long haul.

As an example, why we are talking with you about using Beacon, is that you know Ty pointed out that on average our response time at the hospital was less than 15 minutes. It’s always been that way, and we are one of the few organizations in the nation that have that kind of response mechanism in place.

Typically, they may arrive within an hour or two. In some cases it’s less than that, but by and large, or they may wait for the victim to be discharged and they receive the referral and then provide the support after the fact in many cases.

In our case, what happens is that we’re able to look at the Beacon system, it actually allows us to actually even capture that in real time in terms of response.

So think a year or two out what that might mean to demonstrate the fact that we are in fact not only a nimble, but also a very effective response team to get to the victims and families where and when it counts, which is during that acute stage. And so it’s really all about collecting data such as what Beacon has and will continue to provide for us.

There’s also all the other metrics that I pointed out or other examples such as, again, people’s own willingness to testify or, validate your program. In addition to some of the other data that’s being captured by Shenell and her team, from a case management standpoint, how many folks are utilizing what.

How often do they utilize that service? What are the conditions behind utilizing those services? All of this takes to account or helps to demonstrate or create a story that we can begin to tell folks about the program and to continue to gain support and resources to keep our program going on behalf of the community.

Jason: Absolutely. Being able to show the data, but then to put it into the context with real stories is just so important.

If I could go over to Shenell, let’s say you were going to be scaling your program, or maybe I should ask you, what are your goals for the program?

Do you have any aspirations to scale it or to expand into other areas? What do you see as the future for what you’re doing in the Hartford Care Response Team?

Shenell Benjamin (Director Hartford Care Direct Response Team): Oh, of course, I feel like to not grow, it means to stay stagnant and the community stays the same.

So as far as the goals that I have, they’re huge, they’re huge.

They require a lot of funding, of course.

But as far as seeing the community better, seeing the individuals that I work with better, and that we all go to sleep at night knowing that we made the community and ourselves better, that’s important.

One thing that I actually go off of is, I don’t know if you know about the Starfish story.

Jason: I don’t, what’s the Starfish story?

Shenell Benjamin (Director Hartford Care Direst Response Team): So the starfish story is about a young boy. He’s on a beach, and I could be saying this slightly wrong, but bear with me. The young boy is on a beach, and he’s throwing starfish in the water.

So there’s thousands of starfish on the beach. So this young man, a gentleman, he’s walking alongside the beach and he approaches the young boy and he’s like, “what are you doing?”

The boy says, “well, the tide is starting to recede, and if I don’t help these starfish, then they’re gonna die.”

So he’s like, “young man, respectfully, there’s too many starfish out here for you to save them all.”

So, The little boy looked at the older man, and as the look at each other he picks up a starfish and he throws it in the water and tells him, “it mattered to that one.”

And so every morning, and almost every night, that’s the story that gets me through today just to know if we do just a little bit more, or if we just touch one more person, that it mattered to that one.

But the bigger picture, I mean, we’re growing. I mean, we’re taking on the software, the amazing software that you have.

We’ve always tracked the numbers and collected data, but now we have something else that backs the numbers and everything that we’ve collected up.

It just seems bright when you think when we sit around the table and put everybody’s pieces together, all these puzzles, like everybody, I mean, in our human form.

But I see everybody as a little piece of this puzzle here within this agency. We fit and everyone that we bring aboard, fits, and the people’s lives that we touch, they become family.

So no one’s really a case number. They’re family. Regardless of age, you know, and any demographic, you’re automatically family.

So just seeing this as not just work, but a family dynamic that allows us to go further. And this amazing team has gone above and beyond and continue to go above and beyond to the point in which we kind of forget about ourselves.

The vision is definitely really, really big. Hopefully I answered your question.

Jason: Yeah, absolutely. That means a lot. It really does. It’s very easy to get bogged down. But to have that mindset that what you’re doing every day is having an impact on somebody, really, really does a lot to keep things moving forward.

Ty, I’m wondering if you could share a particularly memorable intervention that you had where it kind of brought it all together for you. I’m sure every situation is unique and they all have different value, but maybe there’s one that sticks out in your mind that you could share where you really saw the value of what you were doing and the impact that the entire organization is having.

Ty Bynum (Crisis Intervention Specialist): All right. I got one in particular that stands out cuz it touches a little close to home.

But just to give a little background, prior to my first hospital responses, like I stated earlier, Mr. Woods and the team definitely trained me well. I had to learn a lot of numerical data and statistics that speak to the work, and one of those is, I believe, one out of three individuals, without these wraparound services, will return back to the hospital.

And so that type of situation actually happened with my younger brother. He’s not my blood brother by I’ve known him since he was in second grade and I grew up with him. And prior to me being hired by the response team, these are individuals who I grew up with, like I stated earlier about experiences, I knew young men that I know are impulsive, have probably a few violent tendencies outta protection. And one time my younger brother was physically assaulted by a gunshot wound way before I got hired with this organization.

And once I got hired by the organization, and I’m reading these statistics about returning clients and if certain clients don’t receive these services, they have higher chances to be re-injured or in most cases, end up dead.

So I think the second month I got hired, we got a call to the hospital. We get to the hospital, and lo and behold, it’s my younger brother.

I seen his mother and I already knew what it was. And in that moment, I recognized the value of information and just knowing about services and why it’s important because now it’s touched home and this is his second time being injured by a gunshot wound, and those services were not conveyed to him the first time in so many ways.

So this is information I’m coming across, and these numbers don’t lie, bro. You may not be lucky again, like, you know what I’m saying?

So in those moments, those personalized moments I’ve understood why these initiatives and organizations are not only necessary, but I understood their effectiveness. And if it wasn’t for the data, the training, and just the overall exposure to the backside of the work, I wouldn’t be able to take this information and convey it to friends and family that I know.

Violent perpetuators or victims that’s been perpetually victimized. So until they get to see the bigger picture from someone that can speak in a way that they can comprehend, it makes it a bit of a, like in the dark circumstance.

So after that particular circumstance, I tied the boots a little tighter, you know what I mean? Cause now I’ve really seen the picture in which Shenell, Mr. Woods was trying to paint as far as how the work can be when it gets to be serious. And once I’d seen my brother, I realized like, okay, we can’t play. We gotta really be serious about getting these individuals wraparound services, being apathetic, and just realizing, like Shenell mentioned, a lot of times family, when you look at ’em as a family member, it’s a different type of we gotta get ’em these services, we gotta make sure they straight, we gotta make sure they relocate or make sure they get therapy or make sure when we go to a house visit we bring a pizza or a balloon or something to put that soft, warm touch on it and once it hit home it just really opened up all the stadium lights.

Jason: That’s powerful. I really appreciate that. I can see absolutely when I was working as a paramedic getting called and you get called and it’s your friend or family member that you’re responding to, it just puts it in a whole new perspective. Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing.

Andrew, is there anything else you’d like to share with the listeners before we wrap up here?

Andrew (Executive Director): No, I think we covered the waterfront in terms of, you know, where we started at as an organization, the nature of the work, what goes into it and some of the impact that we have on the victims, the families, and certainly the overall community and certainly being able to continue to elevate the importance of this work through your platform or others. For those that will be listening or watching this, we can only continue to look for opportunities such as this one to keep elevating this message.

And we appreciate the partnership with you and the Beacon folks.

Jason: Absolutely. It’s really our pleasure and our honor to be able to support you.

It really means so much to be able to reach the organizations that are on the ground making an impact. If people wanted to reach out to you, what would be the best way to get in contact?

Shenell Benjamin (Director Hartford Care Direct Response Team): Our website which is www.hartfordctc.org.

Jason: Excellent. Well, thank you everyone. Really appreciate it. It’s been awesome talking with you, learning about HCTC, and we really look forward to continuing the collaboration. You’re doing