A Message from the Coordinator…

Kings Partnership for Prevention kicked off 2010 with a general meeting on January 15th. Thank you to Sue Braz and the Staff of Hannah’s house for hosting many of our meetings. Sue has been a member of the Coalition since its inception and it has been a great pleasure to have her support and to be able to support her many programs including Champions, Celebrating Families and Hannah’s house. Support and networking is a large part of our coalition’s purpose. We invite all individuals, organizations and businesses who share our mission to join us at one of our general meetings.

A topic of great concern as we enter the New Year is the budget crisis in our state. This has resulted in many changes, issues, and challenges that affect substance abuse and crime in our communities and has impacted many of our members in their businesses and personally. Unemployment leads to crime, however our state is not in a position to increase court, incarceration or probation costs. In fact, they are focused on just the opposite. The state is taking extreme measures to reduce spending and it includes an “Early Release” program for inmates and reduced sentencing for new crimes. Treatment programs have been slashed due to funding shortages and those remaining are operating on reduced budgets.

What this means for prevention is we have to do our jobs better than ever at this time. Our economy cannot afford to wait to address needs in the crisis, or treatment needed mode. We need to focus on prevention of problems before they begin. We cannot claim the economic crisis for not doing good prevention. Prevention is less expensive than treatment. It makes good economic sense to put the dollars we do have available into prevention. Prevention has become a science over the past two decades and science based, research driven prevention is effective.

I invite everyone in our community to join the Kings Partnership for Prevention in its efforts to reduce substance abuse and crime in our communities. Through collaboration and networking, I believe we can overcome any economic stress and make a significant impact on the wellness of our community.

Happy New Year!

Nell Lobdell

KPFP Coordinator

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