Not quite two years old, the Allen County Substance Abuse Task Force has earned yet another grant intended to further its goal of reducing substance abuse among the county’s young people.
The roughly $23,000 grant — awarded by the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services — will provide the coalition with the resources to continue to support county-wide programs that combat substance abuse, especially underage drinking, both in the schools and in the community at large.
“The whole mission of the task force,” reflected Sheriff Bryan Murphy, the group’s chairman, “is to be proactive, and to put in place preventative measures so that we don’t have to deal with the effects of substance abuse after the fact.”
In addition to the programs already installed in the community, ACSATF (a subgroup of the Allen County Multi-Agency Team) has its eye on the future: The group is currently preparing the launch of a public service announcement, which will precede movies at the local theater. It is planning to team up with the Southeast Kansas Mental Health Center for a program called “Active Parenting of Teens,” which involves a six-week course of education for both parents and teens. Noticing the frequent link between substance abuse and suicide, the task force also hopes to host sessions aimed at reversing the upward swing of youth suicide.
Where the task force’s concern has previously been aimed at the under-18 set, the latest grant allows the group to extend its influence into the collegiate sphere, where it is forging a partnership with Allen Community College through the TIPs (Training for Intervention Procedures) program.
“We’re so used to doing all this work as volunteers, with no money,” said Angela Murphy, the group’s treasurer and author of the latest grant, “that we’ve become really self-sufficient as a group. [The funders] told me: If there’s ever a coalition that deserves it, it’s yours, because you have the follow-through and the backing to support yourselves. But that’s really because of the people here who get involved, and the community.”
“We’ve very fortunate to have a community that is so supportive of everything we’re trying to accomplish,” said Sheriff Murphy.
