Cambridge Holistic Emergency Alternative Response Team [HEART]

Cambridge HEART works toward creating a city free of carceral systems where cycles of violence are replaced with practices of care, healing, transformative accountability, and community self-determination. Cambridge Holistic Emergency Alternative Response Team (HEART) is a community-led proactive public safety program that aims to address the immediate needs of people in conflict or crisis (at the moment of crisis). We will directly deploy HEART responders for EMERGENCY calls, including for those with mental illness and/or substance use disorders in public spaces as well as domestic spaces (within people’s homes). Principles: Trauma informed care, Harm reduction, Self-determination, Connection, Transformation, Interdependence. Cambridge HEART works toward creating a city free of carceral systems where cycles of violence are replaced with practices of care, healing, transformative accountability, and community self-determination. We currently only take non-emergency requests, and we commit to being in touch within one week

Core Beliefs: No police involvement, No clinicians as responders, No social workers as responders. The HEART model is what the community articulated as a solution that better supports a set of populations who are presently un- and underserved by the existing public safety system. These identified populations include undocumented residents.