During a recent Marshall County Community Corrections Advisory Board meeting, Judge Dean Colvin noted that a $60,000 grant was awarded.
MCCC Executive Director Ward Byers shared that a portion of the Justice Partners Addictions Response Grant funding will be dedicated to informing community members about how they can get help with recovering from substance use disorder.
He explained, “We have asked for and received grant funding to provide information to the community to educate the community on resources that are available.”
To make the information accessible to everyone, Byers said they’ve tossed around the idea of providing the resources through a phone app.
Byers shared, “Families members, law enforcement, anyone who has access can download that app and provide community-specific resources that are available; everything from NA and AA all the way up to inpatient treatment and everything in between.”
Byers said while some resources do exist they don’t really dive into all the different kind of options that may be available within a specific area.
He mentioned, “There are resources out there now on the state’s websites but its not community specific and if you look at it it’s really based on ‘what’s in Allen County, what’s in Marion County, what’s in Lake County’, it doesn’t really talk a lot about community level resources.”
As of right now, nothing has been officially created but the app is being considered as a way to effectively get the word out about all the various ways that people can reach out for help within their own community.
The intention behind providing the public with access to these resources is to hopefully divert individuals away from incarceration as a result of their addiction.
This method of community service is associated with a fairly recent addition to sequential intercept model.
More details about that system will be shared in future articles and the entire discussion held during last week’s Marshall County Community Corrections Advisory Board meeting will be featured on the Maximum Impact program this Sunday at noon on Max98.3 FM
