State receives $6.5 million grant to help fight opioid crisis

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A federal grant of more than $6 million is headed West Virginia’s way to help fight issues dealing with the opioid crisis.

The $6.5 million grant was announced Friday coming from the Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Site-based Program (COAP). The program supports innovative ways to encourage substance abuse treatment and recovery.

A release said Justice and Community Services, part of the Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety (DMAPS), successfully applied for funding reserved for statewide projects.

Helping at-risk children, steering more troubled adults toward harm-reduction services, and extending telehealth further into rural areas seem to be the focus areas from the funding.

Center for Children’s Justice Director Andrea Darr said the state needs help with children in schools affected by the crisis and will use Handle With Care, a center for children’s justice.

“When you go to school the next days, odds are you’re in school and you don’t have your homework, you’re bombing a test, you’re acting out, you’re tired and you’re hungry and you can’t learn,” she said.

“We want children when they are at school to be able to learn. If they are reliving their trauma or working through their trauma they are not learning.”

Handle with Care will be called upon greatly with the grant’s first goal of at-risk children. Darr said it’ll be a three-step program.

“The notice to the schools, trauma-sensitive schools and therapists on-site at the schools,” she said. “We want whoever is doing this to follow the program. It’s not okay to identify a child and not be ready to help them.”

According to the release, the grant will similarly aid the West Virginia Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program. the program pursues community-based supportive services as an alternative to the criminal justice system in appropriate cases involving such low-level offenses as drug possession.

 





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