SKOWHEGAN — Somerset County officials have extended a partnership between law enforcement and a public health agency aimed to support recovery from opioid addiction.

The county’s Board of Commissioners voted last month to allocate $50,000 from national opioid settlements to support the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office’s work with Somerset Public Health, a division of Redington-Fairview General Hospital.

The partnership between the two agencies began at the start of this year through a one-year, $137,000 grant from the University of Baltimore Center for Drug Policy and Prevention.

With the grant ending at the end of the calendar year, Somerset County Sheriff Dale Lancaster and County Administrator Tim Curtis recommended the commissioners use the $50,000 in settlement funds to continue the program until Somerset Public Health can secure other funding, according to meeting minutes.

“I just felt this was a good use of this money,” Lancaster said in a recent interview, “if we’re looking for ways to help the citizens of Somerset County to get a pathway forward to recovery.”

Through the partnership, Betsy Richard, a care coordinator for Somerset Public Health, has worked within the Sheriff’s Office to take referrals from sheriff’s deputies who responded to calls involving overdoses and substance use disorder. Richard then works to connect those involved with resources to help with recovery.

“In the past, there was nobody to really call to say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a problem here and maybe we could help. These people are asking for help,’” Lancaster said. “We didn’t have a good structure on how that happened. I think this is a good position to have to help these people that have these types of addictions.”

Lancaster said there have been signs of early success in the first year of the partnership. Through the beginning of November, Richard said she received 36 referrals from the Sheriff’s Office.

“It has gone really well in terms of getting the referrals from deputies,” Richard said Monday. “I’ve been able to connect with multiple people for follow-up, for getting them whatever their needs are, which is anything from treatment to recovery support to family support to harm-reduction supplies. That piece is going really well.”

The new funding approved by the county commissioners is to continue Richard’s position as care coordinator, but she said she is working now to determine which parts of the program will continue after the grant ends this year. Richard expects to have more details in January.

Two community connection centers offering information and resources in Madison and Bingham, another aspect of the program funded under this year’s grant, have not been utilized much by area residents, Richard said.

Statewide, the settlement funds used to continue the Somerset County partnership are being used for a variety of “opioid abatement activities,” including prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery programs, according to the Office of the Maine Attorney General.

In total, Maine expects to receive more than $230 million over 18 years from the settlements with prescription drug manufacturers, distributors and retailers that faced litigation related to the opioid epidemic, according to the attorney general’s office

Of that total, 30% is to be paid to eligible municipalities and counties across the state. Somerset County is set to receive a total of nearly $2.5 million through 2038, state data shows.

The county has also used some of its funds to support the use of Sublocade, a monthly injectable opioid addiction medication, for inmates at the Somerset County Jail.

In 2023, fatal overdoses in Maine declined 16%, marking the first year-to-year reduction in fatalities since 2018, according to state data. Overdose deaths in the state peaked in 2022 at 723; there were 607 reported in 2023.