The judge from a local drug court says there's a lot of uncertainty around some of their funding right now.
The Trump administration unexpectedly canceled about around $2 billion worth of grants for mental health and substance abuse treatment nationwide Tuesday night. The money comes through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. No reason was given.
Hamilton County programs were supposed to get $2.7 million over several years. Judge Nicole Sanders with the Drug Treatment and Recovery Board says Wednesday night, the order to end the grants was reportedly reversed.
“This money is vital for our community and our participants, and just to have this level of instability is unsettling,” she says. “It’s hard to plan going forward. It’s hard to plan to make sure that our participants will have what they need.”
Sanders says the federal money joins local funding to help people seeking treatment. The money pays for things like transitional housing and medication.
“People who are justice-involved often are suffering from poverty as well, and don’t have the means to concentrate solely on treatment,” she says. “It allows them to … address those areas that they need to improve so that they can achieve sobriety and long-term recovery.”
Sanders says they are looking at contingencies in case the funds are withdrawn again.
“To be quite honest, with the way the [Trump] administration has been operating since they took office, it’s been on our radar,” she says. “We were caught off-guard in the immediacy, the abruptness of it, but it’s a conversation that we’ve had ongoing since this administration took office.”
Sanders says as of Thursday morning, the drug treatment and recovery board had a verbal commitment the funding was restored, but had not received written confirmation.
She says the opioid crisis continues and this uncertainty comes at a bad time.
“We are just now starting to get a really good foothold on harm reduction, treatment and understanding what it means to support people and help them reach long-term recovery.”
Sanders says to reverse course now would be devastating.
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