KYC’s Pos­i­tive Youth Devel­op­ment Team Expands Sub­stance Use Pre­ven­tion Efforts

December 17, 2018

KYC’s Pos­i­tive Youth Devel­op­ment team (PYD) pro­motes healthy choic­es for youth ages 10 – 17 through edu­ca­tion, aware­ness of health issues, pol­i­cy change, com­mu­ni­ty col­lab­o­ra­tion, and evi­dence-based pro­grams that sup­port sub­stance use pre­ven­tion. They were recent­ly award­ed two new grants, the Illi­nois Recov­ery Ori­ent­ed Sys­tems of Care (ROSC) Grant and Drug Free Com­mu­ni­ties (DFC) Grant. These grants will each allow PYD to con­tin­ue to expand their cur­rent sub­stance use pre­ven­tion efforts in our communities.

With the ROSC Grant, PYD aims to estab­lish and a mix of sub­stance use dis­or­der ser­vices (SUDs) and recov­ery sup­ports for youth, adults, and fam­i­lies that will be acces­si­ble through­out the com­mu­ni­ty. Recov­ery sup­ports include employ­ment coach­ing and train­ing, peer recov­ery coach­ing, recov­ery skills, spir­i­tu­al sup­port, and trans­porta­tion. The goal of the first year of this grant is to cre­ate a strate­gic plan to demon­strate that there are many path­ways to recov­ery. The ROSC grant focus­es on youth 16 – 24 years old and vet­er­ans of all ages. 

The Drug Free Com­mu­ni­ties (DFC) Grant will expand PYD’s pre­ven­tion efforts by allow­ing them to focus on reduc­ing the use of mar­i­jua­na, e‑cigarettes/​vaping, and opi­oids. PYD will part­ner close­ly with youth, fam­i­lies, local schools, com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions, elect­ed offi­cials, and law enforce­ment through­out the upcom­ing years. Through these part­ner­ships, PYD will address fac­tors in the com­mu­ni­ty that con­tribute to youth sub­stance use and pro­mote the fac­tors that min­i­mize use. 

Each of these grants will allow PYD to expand the pos­i­tive impact that they’re able to make on our youngest com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers while increas­ing­ly engag­ing crit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty part­ners in youth sub­stance use prevention. 

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