New system will emphasize community-based efforts on behavioral health issues
by Dave Ranney, KHI News Service
Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services officials plan to spend the next eight to nine months crafting a new approach to helping community-based coalitions combat alcohol and drug abuse, prevent suicide, address problem gaming and promote mental health.
Sarah Fischer, prevention program director at KDADS, said the agency will issue a request for proposals in the spring that will be open to communities across the state.
In the meantime, Fischer said, the department has been renewing its mini-grants with 28 established coalitions.
“These are three-year grants,” she said. “Some of them have one or two years remaining; some have three. We’re committed to continuing these grants.”
But some of the grants, which range from $5,000 to $25,000, may go to initiatives in other communities.
A list of the 28 coalitions and their grant totals was not immediately available.
KDADS, Fischer said, hopes to find additional funding for next year’s grants.
“But for right now, we’re basically working with the same amount of money we’ve had in the past,” she said.
Fischer addressed a Thursday afternoon “listening session” at the Holiday Inn Express in Lawrence. KDADS led similar gatherings this week in Colby, Garden City, Wichita, Salina and Chanute.
In recent years, the grants had been awarded and administered by 10 regional prevention centers.
As part of the new approach, KDADS withdrew its support for the regional centers, effective July 1, and awarded planning, training and analysis grants to Center for Community Support and Research at Wichita State ($684,997), Center for Learning Tree Institute, an affiliate of the Southeast Kansas Education Service Center at Greenbush ($609,950), and DCCCA in Lawrence ($346,245).
The three organizations will work in the next year to design the new prevention approach and its implementation.
The change, Fischer said, is meant to provide “a more holistic approach” in helping communities address behavioral health concerns.
Instead of coalitions limiting themselves to single-issue campaigns — reducing underage drinking or drug use, for example — they will broaden their mission to include mental health, at-risk youth, problem gaming, suicide prevention, early childhood development and domestic violence.
Representatives from each of the three grantees assured the 80 people in the Lawrence audience that they were committed to being collaborative and helpful.
“We want to partner with you,” said Randy Johnson, director of behavioral health initiatives at the Center for Community Support and Research.
Sandra Dixon, director of addiction services at DCCCA, said much of the new approach is driven by the belief that local coalitions are in a better position to handle the “logistic work” that, earlier, had been assigned to the regional prevention centers, a group that included DCCCA.
“It makes more sense for the communities to be doing this work for themselves,” she said.
Stuart Little, a spokesperson for the Kansas Association of Addiction Professionals, said some communities may not embrace the change in approach.
“It will be interesting to see how many of the 28 community coalitions transition into the new setup,” Little said. “Who will be strong enough to survive, to do the kinds of things they haven’t had to do in the past? I suspect there will be some that will say, ‘If we don’t have a PRC to help us, we’re done.’ I don’t know, we’ll just have to see.”
Corrina West, a Kansas City-based advocate for people with mental illness, questioned the change.
“This idea of building a ‘coalition of coalitions’ isn’t evidence-based,” she said. “If they want to increase peer input and innovation, a coalition structure isn’t the way to do it.”
“Peer input” refers to efforts to encourage people with mental illnesses to advocate for themselves rather than relying on others to decide what’s best for them.
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