WLEN Interview with Cradle to Career Director Tim Kelly

Woman’s Voice: The Lenawee Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition is a diverse group of dedicated community members united around the goal of reducing substance use in Lenawee County. LSAPC members work collaboratively to engage and educate the community in order to promote a healthy Lenawee.

Kathy Williams: This is Kathy Williams. And with me on tonight’s program is Tim Kelly.  Tim works at the Lenawee Intermediate School District, LISD. He is also the chair of the Prevention and Education committee for the Lenawee Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition. Tim, lots of acronyms there.

Tim Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. Sorry about that. That’s, we know who we are.

Kathy Williams: We know who we are. There we go. So we want to talk a little bit tonight about a, is it a statistical evaluation that they do for kids? The back to school MiPHY?

Tim Kelly: Yeah. The MiPHY

Kathy Williams: Yes.

Tim Kelly: Is a survey that’s done each year with students. It’s voluntary. It’s done with seventh, ninth and 11th graders.

Kathy Williams: Okay.

Tim Kelly: And it kind of focuses all over the place of attitudes about things like substance use, how they feel about their community, their family, school, sexual behaviors, violence, and just general health too.  So it’s a very broad- based set of questions. There’s many questions by the way. But this past year we had 700 plus middle schoolers take it.

Kathy Williams: Okay.

Tim Kelly: And over 1200 ninth and 11th graders took it.

Kathy Williams: Now, is this just in Lenawee County? Is this a whole state?

Tim Kelly: The numbers I’ll be talking about are just Lenawee County.

Kathy Williams: Okay. That’s good.

Tim Kelly: Yeah, but the, it is offered at any school throughout the state.

Kathy Williams: So because the Lenawee Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition is, you know, and our task is to find out what’s in the mind of our students and how are they being exposed so that we can gear our prevention and our education more direct to them basically, you know.  So, what kind of information did they find out by the latest survey then?

Tim Kelly: Yeah. Well, let me, let me start with middle schoolers because I found that most interesting that a lot of things that maybe in the past might have been something that was significant for high schoolers has now seemed to move down to middle schoolers. So, it is encouraging though, because the attitudes that are reflected in all the statistics kind of show that kids are not thinking about using substances like they used to.

Kathy Williams: Okay. So maybe some of the education is working.

Tim Kelly: Yeah. They seem to be, I don’t want to say smarter about it, but they they’re wiser and they understand it.  They know that, you know, what is good and bad. But you know, they understand that marijuana is now legal and they do view that a little bit different than what they did in the past surveys. But you know, the attitudes now are that, you know, we are going choose not to use, you know, our friends don’t use, my family may not be using, people I’m around may not be using, so I’m not going to use.

Kathy Williams: Okay. Well, that’s definitely a turn in the right direction.  Especially with so much going on with overdoses.

Tim Kelly: Yeah.

Kathy Williams: And maybe the future education should be pinpointed even to grade school kids.

Tim Kelly: Yeah.

Kathy Williams: To help them make that determination before they even get to the middle school age. What did you find out then?

Tim Kelly: Yeah. Well. they, as I said, they view marijuana as differently as what they did in the past. Something that’s unique, but it’s kind of backwards to what we think, but there’s less parents talking to their kids about drugs.

Kathy Williams: Oh.

Tim Kelly: So their education may be coming from different sources.

Kathy Williams: Okay.

Tim Kelly: They don’t really talk amongst their peers; cause there’s a question about “how many of you have you had a best friend that’s committed not to use drugs in the last year?” and that number’s gone down since the last survey was done. So you know, and that just means kids are educating themselves and they’re finding the resources. What I feel is probably the most thing, most important thing, and you even mentioned it with the younger kids, is we need to prevent this. You know, it’s one thing to say “we’re going to stop kids from using drugs” once they start using them, we can identify that. We want to prevent it.

Kathy Williams: Right.

Tim Kelly:  So what do you do? We recognize that, you know, the more parental involvement, the parents need to talk to their kids about using drugs. Even people in a neighborhood, an adult that they connect to, somebody they have a relationship with is telling them “you know, this isn’t good for you”.

Kathy Williams: Right.

Tim Kelly: And those peers, if their peers are saying, “you know, we’re not going to do these things,” including vaping.

Kathy Williams: Right.

Tim Kelly: Which is something that’s been big lately. That number even seems to be going down in Lenawee County, so.

Kathy Williams: Well, and do you feel like the choice, consequences is coming in at all? I mean, are we teaching our kids that all the choices you make have consequences and are you prepared to pay the consequence for bad decisions?  And maybe we need to go back to the fried egg commercial where your brain on drugs or whatever.

Tim Kelly: Well, I think they’re, you know, again, they are learning that.  You know, they’re learning that they don’t want to use drugs. Maybe they’re seeing it in the news. They see, obviously see on social media…

Kathy Williams: Oh, for sure.

Tim Kelly: A great deal. So, messaging’s working.

Kathy Williams: Okay.  Was there any other big revelations that came out of the latest survey?

Tim Kelly: I’m trying to think. I would, kind of an aside to a couple of these things, I think the most difficult things that’s come out of both the surveys for the middle schoolers and the high schoolers, is that with middle schoolers, there’s a lot more online, I’ll call it online bullying, but is things like spreading rumors and making threats, that number has just doubled.

Kathy Williams: Skyrocketed.

Tim Kelly: In the last couple years. Maybe a product of them being at home more.  But it is a drastic increase of that with middle schoolers. So parents need to, you know, pay attention to that.  Within with high school, this is not surprising. There has been more mental health issues. You know, we have more than 25% of our kids reporting that they are depressed. And that’s not a number we want to have of our kids.

Kathy Williams: Right. Tim, if our listeners want to find out more about the survey and the results, is there a resource they can go to for that?

Tim Kelly:  Drug Free Lenawee…

Tim Kelly: Is our website and pretty much you can link from there to just about any type of resource you’re looking for.

Kathy Williams: Okay.

Tim Kelly: So, I would, I direct most people there because it, it is just a good starting point and something you can come back to locally whenever you need to.

Kathy Williams: Well, and I think, you know, if they’re leading a group or anything, if they’re interested in guest speakers to come in and talk there, there’s plenty of people out in the community that would be more than willing to come in and help: you know, go over some of these issues in a classroom setting.

Tim Kelly: Yeah. I, you know, we recently had the Day of HOPE and there was a number of speakers there. Again, you can ask through the LSAPC, you can find on our website through Drug Free Lenawee, you can find many people that would be willing to speak everything from someone in recovery to a doctor or somebody that would come in and talk about what those drugs can do to somebody.

Kathy Williams: Thanks so much, Tim. We appreciate the information and encourage our listeners to find out more.

Woman’s Voice: Thank you for listening. This information has been provided by the Lenawee Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition. Supported by funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration.  New messages air on the first and third Monday of each month at 6:15 p.m. You can listen to this program as a podcast under the audio tab on WLEN.com and listen and gather more information at DrugPreventionLenawee.com.