photo by: Emma Delk

Marshall County Partners in Prevention will use $500,000 of opioid settlement funding from the Marshall County Commission to expand their service reach in the area.

The Marshall County Commission selected Marshall County Partners in Prevention to receive $500,000 of opioid settlement money to assist young children affected by the opioid epidemic and expand programming to discourage opioid use among younger demographics.

The funding will be $100,000 per year granted to PIP over the next five years. With this funding, PIP will create a program focused on expanding the organization’s outreach in the county and bridging any coverage gaps for those affected by opioid addiction in Marshall County.

Marshall County Administrator Betsy Frohnapfel said PIP was selected after “many conversations” between local providers, county officials and Moundsville city officials regarding how to distribute the funding.

She noted that PIP’s focus on assisting young children affected by the opioid crisis motivated the commission to award them the funding.

“From the very beginning, the county commission knew that we did not want to use the funding to pay for the regional jail bills, even though it is a permissible expense, and we wanted to focus on those who are most affected by the opioid epidemic,” Frohnapfel said. “We approached them (PIP) to put together a project because we wanted the focus to be on children affected by the opioid crisis.”

PIP is a collaborative effort between local service agencies spearheaded by CASA for Children Inc. According to Frohnapfel, CASA will be the lead agency for the PIP program and will serve as the “fiscal pass-through” for the funding.

CASA Executive Director Susan Harrison said the funding would focus on expanding the “spectrum of prevention” PIP provides to the area. This expansion includes hiring someone to oversee the organization’s prevention programming and fill in any service gaps between agencies in the area.

Harrison said the goal is to hire the new employee in January. The employee will be designated as a CASA employee but will be attributed to the PIP program.

“We know these programs exist in our area, so we want to build and expand the coalition between these agencies that already exists,” Harrison said. “Our goal is to improve the coordination of our system, whether that’s through resource allocation or more collaborative planning efforts.”

Harrison noted that the program would focus on ensuring that families in Marshall County understand and can access various services. This would include providing them with referrals and connecting them to services.

“You can have a family that’s at risk but they don’t meet CPS criteria,” Harrison said. “We want to connect these families to services and follow up with them to ensure their needs are being met.”

Harrison noted that healthier adults and families in the county can help create healthier children, which she noted PIP’s spectrum of prevention seeks to create by addressing various instabilities within families, including economic instability.

According to Harrison, the organization will also use the funding to “develop and strengthen” the county’s preventive systems by expanding the services provided by PIP. This includes performing more outreach at local schools, such as drug and alcohol prevention programs.

Once the five years of funding have been completed, Harrison said PIP would review the “sustainability of the program.” She said the organization may seek to obtain more grants to continue the project after the pilot funding is completed, noting a lot of federal funding is available for juvenile delinquency and prevention efforts.

“The goal would be that we modeled this program after something that would be able to receive federal funding in the long term,” Harrison said.

Harrison noted the importance of the funding targeting children, which she described as a group that had been “sorely affected” by the opioid crisis “without any choice.”

“I have seen cases where we have great-grandparents raising grandchildren because two generations have been affected by the opioid crisis, so I really want to see the money be used for prevention of use,” Harrison said. “It can’t just be about prevention and treatment of the opioid disorder itself. We must look at it from a systemic problem where we need to help families so they aren’t relying on these negative coping skills.”

More funding is coming for the commission to decide how to distribute. Over the next five years, the commission will receive an additional $501,818 in opioid settlement funding.

Frohnapfel said the commission would continue to work closely with the city of Moundsville and other municipalities to determine how they would allocate the funding.

“There are other programs and other needs that have come to light with the meetings we’ve been involved in,” Frohnapfel said. “I think down the road there may be some partnerships between the county and our municipalities. Even if a municipality isn’t involved in the programming financially, they will still feel its impact because everything we do with the funding, including this project, is countywide.”