NNews April 2024

28 April 2024 The CapeMay County Youth Resiliency Teamhas ten chapters. We take the lead from the youth. We focus on leadership and substance use prevention through the lens of youth leadership as a resilience factor. To build resilience, we hold age-appropriate conversations about risk factors and give youth concrete tasks. For example, at one high school, the Youth Resiliency Teamaddressed the issue of most school bathrooms being closed because of vaping; they did a fundraiser to purchase vape detectors. For the Police Youth Camp, Cape Assist is the vegetable to the police’s cupcake. All summer camps aim to build connectionwith police so adults and kids go to police, not run away from them. For the first two years, we helped organize each camp. Now, we have six camps in the county. Each police department does its own thing. At each camp, Cape Assist presents lessons on life skills, such as stress management. We provide the same curriculum in schools and at these summer camps, we facilitate booster sessions on these lessons. The camps also host boating trips and other experiences that many kids otherwise would not get to enjoy. In one town that doesn’t have a police department, the camp is run by emergencymedical technicians and fire fighters. In another town, the prosecutor’s office runs the camp; this one focuses on kids with high levels of adverse childhood experiences. This group meets about five times throughout the year to keep with the prosecutor’s office and Cape Assist counselors connected. Cape Assist also operates the third Prep Recovery High School in New Jersey, which opened in 2019. NJAMHAANews: Please share highlights of Cape Assist’s history and expansion over the years. Katie Faldetta: When Cape Assist was founded 42 years ago, it was entirely school age-based with the goal of reducing substance use. This is still at the heart of what we do though we have expanded to adults. We focus on how to age healthfully and identify needs relating to mental health and substance use. We created theW.I.S.E. (Wellness Initiative for Senior Education) program because as we get older, we experience changes in howwe process emotions, as well as food and alcohol. Cape May County has a high percentage of grandparents raising their grandchildren since the parents are not able to because of substance use or other extenuating circumstances. So, the grandparents need support. We fold them intoW.I.S.E., as well as Strengthening Families and other programs, to provide a supportive network and education. In the past ten years, we doubled our staff and budget. We introduced new services and expanded into the space where we are supportive of parentingwith educational life skills programs for youth. The greatest expansion occurred recently with Youth Mental Health First Aid training for our staff and students. This was spurred by responses to a biannual survey of middle and high school students that we conduct to assess their attitudes and behaviors. In 2021, themiddle of COVID, 40%of 11th graders had suicidal thoughts. We help students identify their own and peers’ challenges, and teach them how to support each other and find trusted adults. CapeMay County does not have enough readily available counseling, which is also true in the rest of New Jersey and across the U.S. This will be the first (continued on page 29) (continued from page 27)