Efforts to reduce substance abuse among local youth have received a boost from a five-year grant that will bring $125,000 annually into Bartholomew County.
Awarded to the Foundation For Youth, the $625,000 federal grant comes from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The Drug Free Communities grant is intended in part to reinforce prevention work already undertaken by FFY and the Bartholomew County Substance Abuse Council to build a safe, healthy, drug-free community.
That’s according to Andrea Vogel, director of FFY’s Communities That Care program, who wrote the grant application. The foundation is working in partnership with the council, which is the county’s designated local coordinator in the grant-awarding process for drug abuse prevention work.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]
Some funds from the grant will be earmarked to provide drug lock boxes for families to keep prescription drugs safe at home, as well as increase awareness of local drug disposal sites.
But the biggest development arising from the grant will be formation of a coalition of several groups and individuals over the next year that will work together to address youth substance abuse issues, Vogel said.
Other coalition members will likely include the Alliance for Substance Abuse Progress, the Bartholomew County Council For Youth Development, local school districts, law enforcement agencies and parents, she said.
In addition, young people will be recruited from all sectors of the community to provide their input, Vogel said.
“We need to know what they think and feel in order to reach them,” Vogel said.
Building that coalition will require convincing different groups to focus on where their missions intersect, as well as how they can best work together to make accomplishments, Larry Perkinson, a council member and Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp.’s employee and student assistance coordinator.
After the coalition is established, the next step will be to expand and develop skills within its members, Vogel said.
Training will include learning up-to-date practices for preventing substance and alcohol abuse, such as the 40 positive supports and strengths that young people need to succeed, Vogel said.
She is referring specifically to 40 developmental assets identified by the Search Institute, a Minneapolis-based organization that works to bridge research and practice in order to help young people become their best.
One half of the assets focus on relationships and opportunities young people need, such as family support, a caring neighborhood and community values, according to the Search Institute website.
The remaining half deal with social-emotional strengths, values and commitments nurtured within young people such as compassion, integrity and honesty, the website states.
The more of these assets a young person has, the greater the likelihood the person will turn out to be a caring, competent adult.
“We are here to enhance access, and reduce barriers to provide the help our community youth needs,” Vogel said.
Well-known for several years in Columbus, the concept of the 40 assets was heavily promoted around the year 2000 by local leaders such as former United Way director Doug Otto and Columbus Regional Health’s director of community health partnerships, Beth Morris.
“It’s not really a program,” Perkinson said. “But it is a process that we can all use daily in our lives to build dreams and hopes.”
A number of potential coalition members have already expressed their desire to revisit the Search Institute’s 40 assets as a means to curb substance abuse among young people, he said.
While it may be a five-year grant, only a 12-month action plan calling for increasing collaboration and training has been developed at this time, Vogel said.
As coalition members move into their second year, it will be up to all members to give their ideas and determine what the next steps should be, she said.
“This is a growing and living action plan,” Vogel said. “We want to bring everyone to the table to build our long-term plan together.”
Although there are no guarantees, these types of federal grants are often expanded from five to ten years of funding, Perkinson said.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”2017 Substance Abuse statistics” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
The following are self-reported percentages of Bartholomew County teens engaged in two forms of substance abuse in 2017.
8th grade: 14 percent consume alcohol; 1.3 percent abuse prescription drugs.
10th grade: 22.7 percent consume alcohol; 4.1 percent abuse prescription drugs.
12th grade: 35.8 percent consume alcohol; 4 percent abusing prescription drugs.
Source: Columbus Foundation For Youth
[sc:pullout-text-end]
