FINDLAY, Ohio — The Hancock County Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board has been awarded a $1 million per year grant from the federal government.
Originally awarded in 2018, the organization has been using the four-year grant to help at-risk kids in their community.
"What this grant does for Hancock County is not only bring all the players to the same table, so the right hand does know what the left hand is doing, but also to make sound policies," the project's lead evaluator, Meelee Kim, said.
Board organizers said organizations helping kids in other counties often don't communicate with each other at all, even if they're helping the same child.
But the Hancock County ADAMHS Board has been able to change that by following a plan designed to bring county-wide services together to help kids with severe emotional disturbances.
"These are children, youth and even young adults who are showing signs of high anxiety, perhaps depression," Kim said.
So, the Hancock County ADAMHS Board created a system to notify other agencies on what's going on and how best to implement care.
"You used to think of a continuum as being like, prevention, treatment, and maybe aftercare," Hancock County ADAMHS Board Executive Director Precia Stuby said. "And now you think about prevention, early intervention, outreach, engagement, those kinds pieces that you didn't really have before."
An example of this is family peer support "where you take a family that's had a similar experience with their child, and you're able to pair them with families that are going through a similar kind of struggles right now," Stuby said.
About 50 kids make up the actual targeted program, but organizers said the techniques extend to every child in the community. And Kim said the results so far are promising.
"Youths, or their caregiver's perspective of their health and their well-being, and their social connectedness, that has improved since they entered the program," Kim said.
Board organizers said they intend to build even more robust programs, like youth peer support to connect kids to others that have overcome similar struggles.