Bartholomew County’s substance abuse initiative is seeking about $500,000 to set up a physical location where people seeking treatment will find referrals and assistance in recovering from addiction.
The Alliance for Substance Abuse Progress also intends to drop Bartholomew County from its formal name as it seeks to become a nonprofit corporation. The entity would supervise the new ASAP Hub with several paid staff members who would also oversee activities of volunteers.
The hub would be located at the former United Way office in the Doug Otto Center, 1531 13th St., Columbus, as early as this November. The space, available for $1,500 a month, opened up as the United Way headquarters has moved across the street.
Some of the money included in the $502,925 request would go toward upgrading the office space and providing office equipment for the ASAP Hub, as well as a few months’ rent this year.
The Substance Abuse Advisory and Accountability Committee on Thursday agreed to forward the requests to the Substance Abuse Public Funding Board with a positive recommendation. The proposal will be considered at 2 p.m. Oct. 15 at Columbus City Hall in a public meeting. If approved there, the request would get final consideration from the Columbus City Council and Bartholomew County Council.
While submitted as an ongoing request, the committees are only considering a recommendation through the end of 2019, committee members said.
It is the second request that has been presented to the committees. The first was the REALM program, to provide drug treatment for men, approved for $241,365 in funding by the city and county. REALM, an acronym for Recovery Enables a Life for Men, is modeled after a successful Community Corrections program for women, Women Recovering with a Purpose.
Hub’s role
Jeff Jones, ASAP’s volunteer executive lead, told committee members why the hub is a crucial component to the strategy of addressing substance abuse locally.
The Hub would provide resources needed to recover from substance abuse, including referrals to already existing programming, help with navigating the health care and insurance systems and resources for connecting to community services, down to the basics of obtaining food, housing and transportation.
ASAP is proposing hiring an executive director and the operations and communications manager, both paid positions. Two other paid positions, the ASAP Hub manager and the ASAP volunteer services manager, would also be put in place. A part-time paid position for a Hub recovery specialist is also proposed.
Volunteers would be used as navigators to provide referrals to community services, and provide life skills and other training to people who visit the Hub, Jones said. Those volunteers may include individuals who are recovering from addiction.
Some of the Hub volunteer roles include a substance abuse support system navigator, whose roles could include addiction specialist, health care coordinator, case worker and others. The navigators link clients to treatment providers, recovery programs such as Celebrate Recovery and Heroin Anonymous, and to supporting organizations such as San Souci, Salvation Army and Love Chapel.
Other volunteers may offer a variety of services or life skills training to support addiction recovery such as helping with a job search, setting up transportation, computer classes and others, ASAP officials said.
ASAP is estimating that the Hub will serve at least 1,000 clients each year, Jones said.
Since ASAP was launched in April 2017, the organization has launched 43 projects that are underway with more to come, Jones said. Twenty-three of them are expected to be completed by May 2019; other projects will launch late this year and in 2019, he said.
One of the projects that will launch Nov. 1 is a social media campaign targeted at reaching an estimated 19,000 people ages 13 to 25 with information about preventing opioid addiction and substance abuse, Jones said.
Prevention efforts
Project Prevent, a grant program that launched in April, has 25 projects underway, funded by about $95,000 in grant allocations overseen by the Heritage Fund — The Community Foundation of Bartholomew County and ASAP. The grant program is funded through the $1 million Mark and Wendy Elwood Substance Abuse Prevention Fund, created when the Elwoods agreed to donate $500,000 if the community matched that amount, which community members did.
Examples of Project Prevent programming include providing a resource person for preschool teachers who are working with students who have developmental delays caused by drug-related issues. That help will be provided for preschool programs at First Presbyterian, First Christian and First United Methodist churches.
Projects also include prescription drug lockboxes for people who need secure medicine storage and environmentally responsible drug disposal pouches for people who no longer need medications.
Transition plan
Jones said ongoing program management in services, prevention and education will be critical to success, citing the need for a seamless transition when he steps out of the executive lead role after a two-years commitment. Jones, a retired Cummins, Inc. executive, said a new leader could take over ASAP in the first or second quarter of 2019.
Mary Ferdon, a member of the Substance Abuse Advisory and Accountability Committee, said bylaws of incorporation for the ASAP nonprofit have been written and a formal board to oversee the ASAP organization could be in place by next month. When this occurs, the three individuals who have led ASAP from its inception — Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop, Bartholomew County Commissioner Carl Leinhoop and Columbus Regional Hospital CEO Jim Bickel — would step out of that oversight role, although they will continue to be involved in the effort.
The board overseeing ASAP as a nonprofit would include representatives from all the sectors currently working on ASAP and other community members, she said. The meetings of that board will be public and follow the state’s open meeting requirements, she said.
Although the request process that ASAP is going through now would only provide funding through 2019, Ferdon explained that ASAP was making its request as one that is ongoing, and that the structure was set up so that city and county officials could see the results and metrics of how many people were served. Elected officials want to see results from the programming when organizations come back for ongoing support, she said.
Committee members expressed unanimous support for the ASAP Hub, saying a place for people who are addicted to find treatment, help and services has been long needed in Columbus.
“I am 100 percent in support of the project,” Sheriff Matt Myers said. “I’ve lived in Columbus all my life, and when we as a community set our mind to do something and solve these kind of problems, we can get it done.”
Jones said the ASAP Hub is crucial to the organization’s mission because it is where people who are in desperate need of addiction services become connected to a system of providers who are prepared to help them.
“The ASAP Hub is where we start making a difference in the lives of those who are really suffering,” he said.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”About ASAP” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
The Alliance for Substance Abuse in Bartholomew County was launched in April 2017 to develop a community-wide response to the opioid crisis. The ASAP leadership team was established and Jeff Jones, a retired Cummins, Inc. executive, volunteered as ASAP executive lead. A group of local health care and criminal justice system executives agreed to a two-year commitment to lead action teams to identify the gaps in the substance abuse treatment system and to prioritize and implement solutions.
In October 2017, ASAP announced its strategy to address opioid addiction and substance abuse based on prevention, intervention, treatment and recovery.
To learn more, visit asapbc.org.
[sc:pullout-text-end][sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”If you go” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
What: Substance Abuse Public Funding Board meeting
When: 2 p.m. Oct. 15
Where: Columbus City Hall
Subject: Determining recommendation for a request by the Alliance for Substance Abuse Progress of Bartholomew County to fund the ASAP Hub and ASAP’s plans to incorporate as a nonprofit.
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