Big Steps Toward a Drug-Free Community

2008-09-17T22:26:15Z

By Melissa Babcock
Special to the Times

The war on drugs still receives attention on every government level. For proof, look no further than Waterford. Its accomplishments battling youth drug and alcohol consumption—an issue to varying degrees in most towns across the nation—have placed it this year as one of six towns in Connecticut and 199 towns in the United States on the list of recipients for a Drug Free Communities (DFC) grant totaling $625,000.

The DFC program addresses factors in a community that increase the risk of substance abuse and promotes factors that minimize the risk to reduce substance abuse among youth, and, over time, adults, according to a statement on SAMHSA’s Web site. The program also seeks to establish and strengthen cooperation among private non-profit agencies, federal, state, and local governments to support the efforts of community coalitions in achieving those same goals.

The Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has awarded DFC grants every year for about a decade to support community-based coalitions.

The funds will arrive in $125,000 installments every Oct. 1 for the next five years, starting next month, said Sue Radway, Waterford’s director of youth services. The Waterford Alcohol and Drug Education (WADE) coalition will apply the grant to town programs.

“There is recognition on [the grantors’] part that change doesn’t happen in a year,” Radway said. “They know that if they’re going to look for change within a community, they need to provide funding that would support that ongoing development.”

Help from a Neighbor

The WADE coalition was formed with the help of funding from a mentoring grant from SAMHSA to the Groton Adolescent Substance Abuse Prevention (GASP) coalition, which is in its eighth year as a DFC grantee.

Through the Drug Free Communities support grant, the GASP coalition set out to help Waterford achieve a standing similar to its own and realize the same success the GASP coalition did when it won a DFC grant in 2001 under the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

“The GASP coalition mentored us, guided us, and provided training and support over a two-year period to [help us] form the coalition, develop our structure, recruit membership, begin our marketing and coalition development, community development, and community awareness activities,” Radway explained.

The DFC support program is the largest federal drug prevention effort in the United States, according to John P. Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, quoted in a SAMHSA release dated February 2008.

The specific core functions of the program are to reduce the 30-day prevalence rate of substance abuse, and increase the age of onset, the perception of harm, and the perception of disapproval of use by peers and adults.

Unlike most other grants, the DFC grant applies to multiple youth substance abuse issues. The town receiving the grant must apply the funds toward reducing the abuse of more than one substance, avoiding the tunnel vision and relative neglect of other problems, if present, that can sometimes occur when a community throws most or all of its primary resources into alcohol abuse.

Michelle Hamilton, the Drug Free Communities coordinator for GASP, shared some perspective from Groton, explaining the mentoring process that took place from 2005 to 2007.

“Our role was to provide support to the coalition and offer up our resources,” she said. “We’ve had a [DFC] grant going into our eighth year, so we have a lot of resources from our own training experiences.”
Hamilton said GASP assisted Waterford with recruiting and advertising within its community to garner support and membership for its WADE coalition. She said the specific training categories were in Coalition Building, Strategic Planning, and Selecting a Science-Based Program. The goals included assisting in the collection of baseline data, evaluation of local strategies and programs, and assisting WADE in drafting a community action plan.

“We started out meeting with Waterford officials and the coalition members they were trying to recruit, and gave them lots of information and training,” she said. “We held four trainings a year on getting together a mission statement and what a coalition looks like—from our perspective and from the Drug Free Communities grant perspective.”

The coalition consists of members identified as “key sectors” in the community in accordance with standards set by SAMHSA, Radway said. Twelve sectors must be represented to meet the requirements of the DFC grant. They can include school, police, elected officials, local businesses, the media, youth organizations, civic groups, and volunteer groups.

The individual sectors combine forces as parts in a whole movement striving toward the same goal, resulting in a coalition.

“Much of what we’ll be able to do is coordinate and support the activities of each of these organizations as they address issues related to tobacco use and alcohol use, so we can direct some funding toward programs that have specifically been identified through evidence-based practices to reduce use,” Radway said.

Waterford’s background in the effective application of funds from other grants, especially its work with Groton, primed WADE to receive the DFC grant—which required an application exceeding 90 pages—on the first try, which is not the norm, Radway said. Usually, a contending community receives feedback on improvements it must make to qualify for the grant. After implementing those changes, it will apply again the following year.

“Fortunately for us,” Radway said, “we were already in a position with the development of our coalition that the grant readers and SAMHSA recognized our status—our position to continue what we’ve done—with additional funding.”

The partnership between Groton and Waterford ultimately surpassed the goal to help Waterford earn the DFC grant, according to Hamilton.

“Basically all of our organizations provided some sort of mentoring throughout the year,” Hamilton said, mentioning Groton’s Boys and Girls Club, the Groton Maritime Academy, the school system, and local law enforcement. “A lot of interaction and networking went on,” she added. “I think it builds a stronger region if we’re all on the same page.”

Though Hamilton did not work for GASP when it received its first DFC grant eight years ago, she said she has noticed a difference in the way Groton’s coalition is run from the earlier days. She said the focus on change has grown from addressing small-scale behaviors to seeking an even larger impact.

“We’re looking to change behaviors in parents and teens: parents as a role model, and teens—where they get their information,” she explained. “One of the things that we’re working on in this region is social norms, changing behaviors, getting kids to see that not everybody does it, not everybody drinks.”

Waterford can reapply at the end of the grant period, like Groton did, and compete again for another five years of funding, Hamilton said. “They’d have $1 million over the next 10 years to try to make a difference in their community.”

By all available accounts, Waterford was a model student. A 2006 GASP report outlining the first-year progress of the mentoring program stated that any challenges, which are faced by all forming coalitions, were “worked on in the spirit of collaboration among coalition members.”
Hamilton said she enjoyed working with Waterford.

“I think it’s great that they finally got the grant,” she said. “That was our goal.”

For more information about the DFC grant, go to www.ondcp.gov/dfc. To read more about SAMHSA, the national organization awarding the grant, visit www.samhsa.gov. Check out the WADE and GASP coalitions at www.waterfordyouth.org/wade.htm. and www.ledgelighthd.org/programs/drug_free.html, respectively.

Kristal Spence

Big Steps Toward a Drug-Free Community