Mike Wolanin | The Republic An exterior view of the Alliance for Substance Abuse Progress Bartholomew County Hub in Columbus, Ind., Monday, June 15, 2020.
Bartholomew County’s largest community substance abuse program is now stretching beyond its geographic boundaries.
The Alliance for Substance Abuse Progress will assist Seymour and the Jennings County Drug and Alcohol Task Force in addressing substance abuse recovery needs, ASAP officials announced.
ASAP will act in an advisory role, providing technical assistance in the community collaboration process, needs assessment and action plan process.
For the first time, Jennings County will have a paid full-time coordinator to concentrate solely on the county’s substance abuse problems, task force spokeswoman Charlinda Evans said.
Seymour will also be able to hire a similar administrator, Mayor Matt Nicholson said. Funding for the two new positions is being provided by the Family and Social Services Administration of Indiana with a grant that continues through June, 2023.
Having a full-time coordinator is a significant step for Jennings County because the task force has always been comprised of volunteers, Evans said. For example, she is a full-time middle school teacher and co-owner of the Perceptions Youth, Mindfulness &Yoga studio in Vernon.
Although the Jennings County group received praise for it’s efforts prior to early 2020, their program was essentially blindsided by COVID-19, Evans said. The pandemic was well underway last year when Columbus Regional Health Survey revealed 43% of respondents from Jennings County indicated their life has been negatively affected by substance abuse.
“We lost a lot of momentum because COVID revealed all the weaknesses in our system,” Evans said. “It forced us to hunker down and focus on what was essential.”
In addition, a number of other agencies that had been working with the task force, such as the Jennings County Health Department and the Indiana Department of Child Services, no longer had the staff to assist Evans’ agency, she said.
“It’s not that we don’t have amazing and compassionate folks, but we lost a lot of people because (other agencies) were temporarily shut down,” Evans said. “People have cut everything that is not their primary concern in order to survive.”
COVID-19 also had a negative impact in Seymour, which already had established substance abuse programs that include Celebrate Recovery and New Beginnings, Nicholson said. A number of those organizations will be able to assist in updating the assessment, he said.
“The pandemic didn’t exactly slam the brakes on our programs, but it did slow everything down and made it harder for people to find those connections,” the Seymour mayor said. “Obviously, we knew we had a substance abuse problem, but COVID made it harder for (those in recovery) to get the help they wanted when they were looking for it.”
After Nicholson talked in late January to about a dozen people involved in long-term recovery programs, he said he met privately with Seymour resident Ben Beatty, who works as the Community Recovery Housing Liaison for ASAP in Columbus.
The next day, Beatty notified the mayor that ASAP Executive Director Sherri Jewett wanted a meeting to discuss the grants, the mayor said.
Nicholson was first elected to the Seymour City Council two years before ASAP was founded in April 2017. The mayor said he has kept a close eye on developments within the organization in Columbus.
“With this grant, we won’t have to reinvent the wheel,” Nicholson said. “This is our chance to learn from somebody else’s successes and mistakes.”
Once the needs assessment and action plan are completed, Seymour officials will be able to identify what gaps exist, and what programs are missing, the mayor said.
“One of my roles will be to work on coordinating with city and county stakeholders, so we can turn this coordinator’s job into a long-term director’s position,” Nicholson said. “We want to continue this on beyond the 16 months we currently have.”
Jennings County also plans to apply for a number of grants that will allow them to keep at least one full-time person working on their substance abuse program, Evans said.
In the wake of the pandemic, many who work with the Jennings County task force weren’t sure how to proceed with their mission, she said.
“Suddenly, this organization (ASAP ) comes swooping in” Evans recalled. “I keep thinking how amazing that is because ASAP has the personnel and capacity to stay focused on assessment and strategic planning. They can do the things for us that we can’t really do.”
The state grant will allow ASAP to receive state funds in exchange for taking their services out of county to serve others, Evans said.
“ASAP may be a Bartholomew County agency supported by Bartholomew County tax dollars, but substance abuse problems don’t stop at any borders,” Evans said. “Communities like Jennings County need help, and that is one of the huge issues our county and state are trying to deal with right now.”
Nicholson said it’s only right that ASAP receive state compensation “because they have Bartholomew County stakeholders to answer to.”
