Kamiah youth program secures federal funding
Nov. 5—KAMIAH — At one point during its ongoing evolution, the adult leaders of Kamiah's teen recovery program realized something essential:
Without the support of parents, it's an uphill battle to help children resist and recover from substance abuse.
Upriver Youth Leadership Council "started focused on prevention," said Amber Hoodman, one of the group's leaders. "But it became apparent that recovery is also a service that is needed in this community. We (can help) prevent youth from using substances, but their parents are using substances. So how do we help the parents so that the youth aren't following that same cycle? Prevention and recovery, they go hand-in-hand."
Hoodman, program specialist for the youth leadership council, heads a recovery program aimed at adults. Recently, the organization received a major award from the Partnerships for Success, a federal community grant resource. The grant will supply $375,000 for each of five years to establish a Recovery Community Center.
The center, which Hoodman hopes will be up and running by the first of the new year, "is going to be a place where people can come and I can help them find resources."
"It's not a treatment center — it's a place where people can make connections with other people. I'm a certified peer recovery coach so I can offer recovery services. (Clients) can come in and we will have a private office so we can work on their goals and plans and how we're going to go about helping them change the things they want to change."
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Sharlene Johnson is the main driver behind the youth leadership council. She began with a handful of volunteers several years ago and has shepherded the group into a community organization that oversees a teen center in Kamiah; a K-6 after school program; a skate park and community garden; parenting classes; and a U.S. Department of Agriculture meal program where youngsters are fed a snack and dinner seven days a week. Johnson supervises a staff of 30 assistants.
"We do a lot," she said.
The teen center in Kooskia that opened in March 2022 is scheduled to close Dec. 1 because of the lack of participation.
Johnson has been persistent in seeking grants to support these programs. She applied four times before finally receiving this last grant to pay for the Recovery Community Center.
"We have a good history with our federal partners," she said. "It's not the only federal grant we've received. They see that we're making a difference here."
Unlike the other recovery centers in Idaho, Johnson didn't seek funding through the state's Millennium Fund, which is an annual endowment the state reached after a settlement agreement with tobacco companies. Johnson said the other recovery centers in the state vie for those funds, "so we didn't want to compete with that. So we just branched out on our own."
The Partnerships for Success grant will pay for a physical location that will include a place for people to come in, have coffee and relax, as well as a private office where clients can discuss their personal situations with an advisor. The group is currently looking at two potential locations but has not yet decided which it will be.
The services, Johnson said, will be free.
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The Latah County Recovery Community Center in Moscow has been open since September 2015 and offers many of the same services to adults that the Kamiah program will offer.
Darrell Keim, manager of the Latah Center, said one of the advantages to having a Main Street storefront office is "just the fact that we're there. We're present and we're on Main Street and we're taking recovery out of the basement."
It's an anti-stigma effort, he said.
Services, which are free, include an information library for recovery resources and a space for recovery-related meetings such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. Keim said there are about 25 groups that meet weekly at the center.
Latah County also offers recovery coaching and peer support.
"It's kind of an adjunct to counseling," he said. Peer coaches are usually people in recovery themselves who have been trained and certified — similar to "sponsors" in the AA program.
"It's really fundamental to recovery programs," Keim said. A recovery coach "is someone who's usually one or two steps ahead (of the client) and they support their recovery by giving back to the community."
The Latah Center also has recovery outreach programs at the University of Idaho and the Latah County Jail. It works to keep people alive and get into recovery and is the local contact for the World Crisis Center network.
Keim said the center operates on an anonymous basis and does not keep track of how many times a person may come in for support. He estimated, however, that his assistants make about 650 client contacts per month involving roughly 30 individuals.
The center serves only adults. Keim said he would love to be able to offer services for youth but that would require a separate facility because at-risk groups cannot be mixed.
About 25% of the funding for the Latah County Recovery Community Center, he said, comes from local donations and 75% from state funding, which often originates from federal resources.
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Lewis County Sheriff Jason Davis, who sits on the board of directors for the Kamiah youth leadership council, said he believes having a recovery center to help adults overcome their addictions will go a long way toward stemming the illegal drug use and trade within the county.
"Most times we know that things start at home," Davis said. "A lot of what we see has started at home and then it continues on to generation to generation to generation because our kids don't know any better. That's all they've been taught in life."
The grant will also help support a school resource officer who will be stationed at the Kamiah schools. Davis said having an officer on school grounds to keep an eye on things and help establish healthy relationships with students "makes me feel a heck of a lot better."
Although Lewis County is small, law enforcement officers are seeing the same illegal drug use among adults and youth that are problems in other parts of the country — methamphetamine, fentanyl and heroin.
"Fentanyl is becoming a huge problem in our society and we know it's here," Davis said. "And the services that the leadership council is trying to provide, this is going to help our community immensely. It's going to help our outlying communities as well. It will give individuals the tools to get on that path they need for success."
The goal, the sheriff added, is to help people "to be productive members of society. After all, we want to see people stable on their feet to provide for their families with work and lean into education and give their children the ability to succeed later in life."
Already the work the leadership council is doing has made a dent in substance use among Kamiah's youth. Johnson said the group does yearly surveys asking students in grades 6 through 12 about their use of tobacco, drugs and other substances.
"And we have seen a huge drop in use rates," Johnson said. "Around here our kids are using meth and prescription drugs and they are using heroin. But those (rates) are really low."
Hoodman said just having a warm, safe place where people can come, even if they are not specifically looking for help, is likely to have benefits into the future.
"You might not see it but there are a lot of homeless people in this town," Hoodman said. "And they don't have places to go to get a hot cup of coffee or just be able to sit inside a warm center. And I want to offer that, too.
"The goal is to plant the seed so if they come in and we show them that we care about them, then eventually they're going to start caring about themselves."
Hoodman speaks from experience.
"I am a person in long-term recovery," she said, "and I found my way to a different life because people showed me that they cared about me. And without that, and that sense of community, I wouldn't have been able to find it. I think that's what helps people change their lives, is to feel like they belong somewhere. And not everybody is against them."
Hedberg may be contacted at khedberg@lmtribune.com.
