Vermont officials are investing in a new weapon – after-school programming – in the fight against the opioid epidemic.
The Agency of Human Services has received legislative approval to spend $600,000 over three years to increase access to after-school programs. The cash comes from a special allocation intended to boost Vermont’s substance use disorder initiatives.
The investment is a preliminary step: It will pay for an in-depth assessment of the state’s after-school offerings, and possibly some additional programming. But advocates say it’s a step in the right direction because after-school programs have been shown to reduce substance use among youth.
In addition to keeping kids busy, “after-school programs are prevention programs because of the skills they build,” said Holly Morehouse, executive director of Colchester-based Vermont Afterschool Inc.
Vermont already invests heavily in addiction initiatives, and the state’s hub and spoke system of medication-assisted treatment is heavily used. But legislators also put an additional $9.6 million in the fiscal year 2019 budget for substance use disorder programs.
Human Services Secretary Al Gobeille has received approval from the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Committee to spend $2.5 million of that money on a variety of initiatives over the next three years.
Among those allocations is the after-school money, which has been approved for $200,000 each year through fiscal 2021.
Gobeille said there’s been conversation among legislators and representatives of the Health Department and state Opioid Coordination Council about “beginning a process of vetting the after-school programs that we have for their viability and efficacy.”
The new allocation would pay for a contracted position to perform that analysis, and it also will “put money into these programs,” Gobeille said.
At this point, there’s no funding plan for specific programs. “There’s the belief that we should do more with after-school programs,” Gobeille said. “We need to figure out exactly what that would mean, and what the cost would be.”
Gobeille said a careful assessment of after-school offerings is “important work that the administration needs to do.” But he also expects that administration officials and lawmakers will “work on these programs together and begin to fund them in a more informed way.”
That’s good news for after-school proponents like Morehouse.
She said barriers like geography, a lack of transportation and family financial constraints prevent many Vermont youth from participating in after-school activities. One impetus behind the push for more funding “is a recognition that we have over 22,000 children and youth in Vermont who would be participating” in after-school programs absent those barriers, she said.
Morehouse said it is appropriate to use substance use disorder funding on “high quality” after-school programming because there’s a direct prevention connection.
“Studies have shown that drug use increases in the after-school hours, especially from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., when young people are unsupervised,” Morehouse said. “Those are the key hours when kids engage in risky behaviors.”
Since the majority of youth between ages 6 and 17 have parents who work, “after-school programs play a really key role in helping to cover that (unsupervised) space,” Morehouse said.
She also said those programs can impart positive qualities like self-control, self-confidence and stronger connections with peers and schools. Some after-school programs follow trauma-informed practices that can help youth who’ve had adverse childhood experiences – a concept that is growing in importance among state policymakers.
While trauma and risky behavior can happen at any age, Morehouse said she sees a “strong need” in Vermont for more after-school programs catering to middle school and high school students. “That period of time, in adolescence, is so critical,” she said.
In addition to funding for after-school programs, the Joint Fiscal Committee approved another $1.9 million in substance use disorder initiative funding for five initiatives. All the money is from the state’s Tobacco Litigation Settlement Fund:
• $400,000 to expand a new nurse home visiting program statewide.
• $600,000 for “clinical suboxone harm reduction.” Gobeille said this is an effort to provide more – and faster – access to medication-assisted addiction treatment.
• $425,000 in contingency funding, mainly to set aside money for state programs in case federal funding is reduced.
• $275,000 to maintain and expand a hospital-based pilot program for better mental health and substance abuse screening.
• $200,000 for increasing hepatitis C treatment for prison inmates in the current fiscal year. That is in response to changing treatment standards and public outcry over a lack of such treatment in state prisons.
