Glove City Coalition AGENDA and MEETING MINUTES
(Bonnie Peck, Note Taker )
Date: Thursday, August 19, 2021
10:00 am Zoom
Promoting healthy futures through collaboration and education. GCC strives to reduce youth substance use by engaging and supporting the community through education and collaboration to promote and sustain healthy lifestyles.
Attendance: Bonnie Peck (Project Coordinator Glove City Coalition), Lashawn Hawkins (I can breathe and I will speak), Rich Wilkinson (Free Methodist Church, Gville/Center of Hope), Laura Sturgess (FC OFA), Brandy Richards (Northeast Problem Gambling Resource Center), Paul Meher (HFM Prevention Council), Vanessa Carey (CCFMC), Tony Clay (Chief of GPD), Chad Brown (FC District Attorney), Theresa Austin (Rob Constantine Recovery Community and Outreach Center), Kelsey Carpe (Cancer Prevention in Action), Dr. Matt Vittucci, Shannon Endsley (FC Public Health), Sally Baker (CDTF), Christine Stegel (1st Congregational Church), Tricia Hillock (FC Probation Dept), Cassandra VanNostrand (Planned Parenthood of Greater NY), Tricia Terlecky (Catholic Charities), Dr. Richard DeMallie (GESD).
| TOPIC | DISCUSSION | Notes |
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Welcome/ Introductions Note Taker: |
Kelsey Carpe Bonnie Peck |
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| Approval of June minutes | Bonnie Peck – motioned Paul Meher – seconded |
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Spotlight Speaker: Patrick Crouse, Four River’s Alliance |
Team Awareness Team Awareness is a workplace wellness initiative that targets an underserved population of adults. In particular, adults that may have addiction problems that could be proactively addressed by workplaces. A fact sheet about the program was provided to those attending in person meeting and emailed to coalition members as well. If you know of employers who would be willing to be interviewed as part of the first stage of this grant, contact Patrick Crouse at: pcrouse@hfmpreventioncouncil.com |
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Old Business: Action Team Reports |
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| Youth Coalition Update (Paul): |
Youth Coalition, Looking to get the group up and running when school starts and recruit new members in both HS and MS. Have them engage directly with GCC and on work groups (especially media) and be involved in radio ads, billboards, educating peers, etc. |
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| Media Committee Update (Cassandra): |
Media/Publicity, Cassandra VanNostrand Haven’t met yet. Will send meeting doodle poll to schedule meeting within the next week or 2. Need a new Media Sector Representative since the LH staff all lost their jobs. Working on getting Media campaigns going targeting both parents and youth. Develop a brochure, replace media sector representative. |
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| Parent Engagement Committee (Paul): |
Met last week. Want to educate parents on the efforts of the coalition to reduce youth alcohol, vape, marijuana use in MS-HS. Still having parents and community do the Underage Drinking Survey. Hope to be at freshman orientation, sixth grade orientation, and other events where parents attend. Also working to get parents on the coalition. -Attend events to recruit parents to coalition and have underage drinking survey filled out. Bonnie will deliver copies of survey and coalition palm card to Tricia Hillock at Probation Dept and Andy at GHS. Also looking to send info home. Possible tabling at sporting events, orientation events and open house. Tricia will take survey door to door during NEU. |
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| Bylaws (Rich DeMallie): |
Rich went over the newly revised Bylaws and highlighted changes. Members voted to accept new bylaws. Rich pointed out it is a living document and may be changed in the future. New Bylaws were approved. Everyone should read through, it gives a good idea of what everyone’s role is in the coalition, ex. Work groups rather than committees, facilitators rather than chairs, etc. |
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| Capacity Building (Rich DeMallie): |
The committee discussed the results of the capacity rating surveys. Results from this past winter/spring. The areas where the coalition rated “weakest” based on coalition member responses are as follows. -Recognition in the community as a known leader in addressing substance abuse problems. -members understanding their roles and responsibilities and having those in writing. -Personal connections outside of coalition -Sharing meeting info with people in their agencies/organizations -financial base to support needed programming. Discussed what resources our coalition has and what resources need to be developed. Human resources we have include a lot of members with a variety of things to offer. Who do we need to engage in the coalition that we are lacking? Parents, business owners, youth. Some potential new members might include Steve Smith, James Hannis from CRG, St. Mary’s Mental Health, someone from the Recreation Commission. Also need to encourage current members who are not as active but represent important resources such as family counseling, the mayor, council-people to be more active in coalition as a whole as well as work groups. State elected officials should be kept abreast of what we are doing. We also hope to work closely with the school district to help them find more evidence based programs to help with SEL in addition to what is already being done. Lashawn sent Bonnie info on who to contact at Leader Herald to try and engage with the coalition now that Trevor is no longer there. Lashawn is going to serve as Work Group Facilitator. She is also going to invite James Hannis to the Coalition. Bonnie is going to as Jenni Mazur about speaking with Recreation Commission at an upcoming meeting. Cassandra is going to compose a letter to send to our representatives and we will add them to our list-serve. Next meeting is September 4th, 10am at CRG |
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| GPD & NEU Updates (Chief Clay): |
NEU, Chief Tony Clay The NEU Work Group has met and continue to work on adding and improving each month’s Wellness Sweep. New organizations are added each time. Reminder that if you are interested in being in the flier that goes to everyone door to door, please send the info to Bonnie to add asap. Bag stuffing will be Sept. 7th at 11 am at HFM Prevention Council on Briggs St. in Johnstown. Chief Clay also reported on the Cribs for Kids Project that provides cribs for families who don’t have them. Det. Faville is the point person. Decided to do because of the number of infant deaths in the city and as an effort to reduce them. NEU, September 9th at Park Terrace School from 4-7. Bag stuffing is September 7th at HFM Prevention Council 11am. Send flier changes or additions to Bonnie at GCC by September 1. |
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| Coalition updates (Bonnie): |
– Cultural Competence Training Cultural Competency Training: Thank You to those who attended last week. My apologies. I had forgotten how interactive it was and they used the chat box a lot which meant we had dead air time. I received a request to get a speaker to do a training live with us that would help us meet our needs here in our community. I will work on that for sometime in one of the coming months. I am also thinking that if there are other web-based trainings that require DFC or CADCA Access taking place that I register for and think the group would benefit from, I could offer to do the training in a location and invite you to attend and we could do it together as a group. Bonnie will try and set up something local in the coming months. – Progress Report The Drug Free Communities Progress Report for February-July of July is due at the end of August. I have completed it and am now waiting for approval or direction if I need to change anything. |
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New Business: 2022 Action Plan SPF Training (Strategic Prevention Framework) Retailer Education Member Info Form Focus Risk Factor: Community Domain, Laws and Norms Favor Drug Use Focus Protective Factor: Community Domain, Rewards for Pro-Social Involvement. |
2022 Action Plan: The application for non-competitive continuation grant for DFC Grant is also due at the end of August. This includes budget and it’s explanation, and an Action Plan for 2022. I sent everyone a copy of the 2022 Action Plan to look over and have met with some of you one on one in the development of this plan. As members of the coalition, it is very helpful for anyone who is doing work that is related to Alcohol, Tobacco/Vaping, Marijuana and other drugs and youth be reflected in completing these goals. Even if you are doing it as part of your organization or if it is someone you work with but not you directly, we would like to hear what you are doing and any possible outcomes. The goal of this coalition is for there to be knowledge about and collaboration between people in our community who are helping reduce or prevent youth substance use. I also want to say, even if you don’t directly address these issues, but are part of addressing the risk factors and protective factors in other ways (ex. Mental health and Social-Emotional Learning) those are also critical components of the coalition. SPF Training: SPF is an acronym for the Strategic Prevention Framework. It is the “scaffolding” for a coalitions ability to set and meet their vision and goals and includes Assessment, Capacity, planning, implementation, evaluation, all while addressing sustainability and cultural competence. By following this framework, we are better able to accomplish our goals and know how we are doing throughout the process. I think it would be good for us to have a training on this process for the coalition so that we all know how it works, what the terminologies are that you hear me using (example, I talk a lot about protective factors and risk factors…but am not sure you really understand what I am referring to). I plan to do that this fall. Retailer Education, Tricia Terlecky- Bonnie and I developed a guide for retailers who sell age restricted products. On Friday, we, along with Lt. Schaffer of GPD visited 20 city retailers and educated them on the laws around selling to youth under 21. For tobacco, there is a law that they can’t advertise outside if within 1500 feet of a school. 3 retailers were out of compliance. After the weekend, Bonnie drove by and 2 of the 3 had taken down their external advertising. Lt. Schaffer gave them the heads up that there will be compliance checks. Member Info Form: After the June Meeting, we created a form that members can use to provide a report to the note-taker so they don’t have to write like crazy during your report. I have copies here today that were next to the sign-in sheet and if you are joining us via zoom, and don’t already have the form…I will send it to you after today’s meeting. Please fill it out and send it to me so I can share it with the note-taker. You don’t have to use the form, if you just want to write the info in an email and send it, that is ok as well. Focus Risk Factor: Community Domain, “Laws and Norms Favor Drug Use” In the NYS Prevention Needs Assessment Survey (Youth Survey) they measure the amount of risk youth have for substance use and other factors related to substance use based on their answers to questions. Some of those questions have to do with various Domains. One being the Community. Research as shown that legal restrictions on alcohol and tobacco use, such as raising the legal drinking age, restricting smoking in public places, and increased taxation have been followed by decreases in consumption. Moreover, the national surveys of HS Seniors have shown that shifts in normative attitudes toward drug use have preceded changes in prevalence of use. The questions ask specifically about whether kids would get caught by police and whether people over 21 think it is ok to drink or smoke. On the national level 38% of kids are at risk due to their belief that they won’t get caught and people in their neighborhood don’t think it is bad for them to use these substances. In Gloversville, 41.9% are at risk. That is a decrease from the 43% for 2018…so we are on the right track. But, we need to do more. If kids don’t think we (including law enforcement) don’t care if they drink or smoke…they are more likely to do it. What are some things we can do to reduce the perception that Laws and Norms Favor Drug Use? Focus Protective Factor: Community Domain, Rewards for Pro-Social Involvement As with Risk Factors, there are scales created in the Youth Survey to measure protective factors…the things that help keep kids from becoming involved in substance use and abuse. In the Community Domain, one of the protective factors is about rewards for positive participation in activities which helps youth bond to the community, thus lowering their risk for substance abuse. About 31% of our youth report protection due to prosocial involvement and being recognized for that positive activity. The national average is 41.2% feel their community rewards pro-social involvement. What can we as a community do to increase the rewards for pro-social involvement? Note: School is important, but school has it’s own domain. So we are talking about outside of school in this case.
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Spotlight Speakers for remainder of year (Kelsey) Note-takers for remainder of year (Kelsey) |
Need speakers for November and December. Sept.: Lisa Cimo, Victim Advocacy Services October: Nancy Deumaga: Mental Health Association. Spotlight speakers: November 18 will be LaShawn Hawkins December 16 will be Margaret Clark and Alicia King form HFM Prevention Council. Note-taker: Theresa Austin will do September. Still need note-takers for October, November, and December. |
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Next Meeting/WHEN: Thursday, September 16, 2021 Note Taker: Theresa Austin Spotlight Speaker: ? |
WHERE: GHS Library
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TIME: 10:00 am |
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Member Reports:
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Kelsey Carpe Upcoming Events/activities: August is Immunization Awareness Month and Cancer Prevention in Action is raising awareness and education in the communities we serve on the importance of the cancer prevention vaccine HPV (human papillomavirus). It stops 6 different cancers for both boys and girls. While COVID has delayed many preventative visits especially for children it is important we increase the HPV vaccine rates as there were 1 million less doses given of HPV in 2020 as compared to 2019 in the U.S. Best way to get more information: www.TakeActionAgainstCancer.com www.Facebook.com/TakeActionAgainstCancer Shannon Endsley-Berowski Car Seat Checks – Wednesday August 25, 2021 8:00 am to 4:00 pm at Public Health, call to schedule appointment. Low income families also would qualify for free car seat if needed. COVID Vaccine Clinic – Thursday August 26, 2021 10:00 am to 11:00 am at Public Health, call to schedule time. Vaccine is Moderna so 18+ only. LaShawn Hawkins Hoops for fun, a basketball program for kids k-8 to have some fun and be active and social ran the program July-August. Activities like this can help prevent substance use. Other upcoming events: back to school event 9/4 at the farmers market pavilion from 10am-3pm. Free backpacks, free haircuts for children 5-15 Free clothes, free pizza while it lasts. Lisa Cimo Victims Services responding to ER and PD for sexual abuse cases. The are open to give overview of program and services at any meetings or for any group. Rich Demallie Starting school September 7th. Sept. 1 from 3-7 is the welcome Freshman event. They will be opening fully. Mask mandate, if masked there will be different quarantine rules masked vs. not masked. This can all change at any time. |
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