CLFC & HIV Prevention

Creating Lasting Family Connections Project Gains Million Dollar Grant To Serve Minority Populations

COPES, Inc. has been awarded a five year grant to implement and evaluate CLFC with minority parents and youth. The project will target Substance Abuse, HIV, and Hepatitis prevention outcomes. The project will also serve families with a family member reentering our community from state and local corrections facilities. Both Ted and Teresa Strader will be providing direct services in this project. Ted will serve as the Principal Investigator/Project Director, and Teresa is in charge of Case Management Services. Ric Stuecker has been hired to fill the role of Project Coordinator. Ric brings an amazing array of knowledge and skills to the project. Ric has 15 years experience as a trainer/consultant to schools and communities around the U.S. in ATOD prevention, resiliency and asset building with National Training Associates and Youth Empowering Systems. He has presented at numerous national, regional, and state conferences on youth development. His two books, Reviving the Wonder and Cultivating Kindness in Schools, published by the Research Press, have formed the basis for resiliency and asset building programs in Orange County California, Southeast Oklahoma and numerous other locations across the nation. We are excited to have Ric on our team.

This project is being evaluated by Craig McGuire and Associates out of Columbus, Ohio. We look forward to the excitement and challenge of this new effort. We hope to once again demonstrate the CLFC program’s effectiveness with these new populations. We also hope to demonstrate our program’s effectiveness in reducing the spread of HIV infection and Hepatitis. We are currently focused on conducting the needs assessment in preparation for our Strategic Plan. We hope to work with a couple of other agencies in other cities who are also considering using CLFC as a part of their prevention effort under this same funding cycle from SAMHSA. We’ll keep you posted as we make progress on this exciting new initiative!


Connect-Immunity Project

A First Year Review

November marks the beginning of the second year of the COPES, Inc. Connect-Immunity Project – a federally funded project to provide family enhancement services and to prevent substance abuse and HIV and Hepatitis transmission in minority and minority re-entry populations. During the first year of the project (as required by our funding source) we collaborated with our community partners, conducted an extensive community needs assessment and developed a strategic plan. All of this activity was planned prior to offering any direct services to the target population. It has been a year of assessment, learning, and gaining deep understanding as we position ourselves with our community partners to begin providing direct services in January.

During the first year we developed partnerships with several community agencies including the Kentucky Department of Corrections, the Volunteers of America of Kentucky, the Louisville Metro Health Department and the University of Louisville WINGS Clinic. From our partners we received training, data and information and strategic planning support. Additionally, we received support for this project from a number of interested community organizations, agencies and groups who are particularly concerned with HIV, Hepatitis transmission and the needs of the minority and minority re-entry population.

The community needs assessment process was lengthy and involved gathering information from a variety of sources in our local community and across our state, conducting surveys and analyzing the responses of key informants and members of the target population and amalgamating information form a large collection of other community needs assessments. The final document was over 300 pages. It was approved by our CSAP project officer in early August.

Following submission of our needs assessment, we turned our attention to developing a strategic plan that proposes the implementation of a program that will meet the prevention needs we discovered during the needs assessment. Again it was a lengthy document – close to 300 pages. We received approval for our strategic plan in October.

We are grateful to both the Kentucky Department of Corrections (and Dismas Charities) and the Volunteers of America of Kentucky for providing us with proposed sites for implementing the prevention program beginning after the first of this year. COPES, Inc staff members are meeting with staff members of these agencies to work out the specific logistics necessary for a successful launch of actual program services. Additionally, we have been meeting with key members of the target population who are recruiting participants for this program. CLFC will be the basis of the program and we are integrating it with the aftercare program provided at the Dismas Charities center and with the substance abuse treatment program provided by the Volunteers of America of Kentucky. We are enthusiastically working and planning for the New Year when we actually begin working with clients.

 

CLFC Links:

Developing Positive Parental Influences | Raising Resilient Youth | Getting Real | Developing Independence & Responsibility | Developing Positive Response | National Replication Sites | CLFC Creates a Platform for Environmental Strategies | CLFC Logic Model | Implementation Options for CLFC | CLFC Options in Treatment Settings | | CLFC National Training System