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Grant can help veterans’ court participants
YOUNGSTOWN
The state has awarded $472,000 to provide vouchers for treatment and recovery-support services to veterans and other adults charged with crimes in Mahoning County.
The Access to Recovery (ATR) grant from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration was awarded by the Ohio Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services to the Mahoning County Mental Health & Recovery Board.
“Our vets will be able to get much-needed ancillary support, like housing and transportation vouchers that will assist them with their treatment,” said Judge Shirley J. Christian of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, who presides over the county’s new felony veterans’ court.
The county’s program will be coordinated by Treatment Alternatives for Safer Communities, a division of Meridian HealthCare. The goal is to increase local recovery-support services.
The grant can help pay for housing in the wake of this year’s U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funding cuts to transitional housing programs, said Duane Piccirilli, Mahoning County Mental Health & Recovery Board executive director.
Of Mahoning County’s SAMHSA award, $236,000 is for the period ending April 30, 2017, and the additional $236,000 is for the period from May 1, 2017, to April 30, 2018.
ATR services have been largely targeted to urban counties with large numbers of people returning home from state prisons.
Mahoning and Columbiana counties have been added to the list of beneficiary counties, which previously included Ohio’s larger urban counties.
“These additional dollars will empower people in recovery to seek services and provide the service providers with the means to wrap the necessary services around the individual to help them the most,” Piccirilli said.
“Being able to meet a person’s need for housing, clothing, peer support, job readiness and other services increases the likelihood that that person can maintain their sobriety,” said Brenda Heidinger, associate director of the Mahoning County Mental Health & Recovery Board.