The financial impact of drug and alcohol abuse on WV's welfare sector is more than $95 million, according to the latest report from the WV Partnership to Promote Community Well-Being and the WV Prevention Resource Center (WVPRC). The welfare system includes programs providing income support and other social services to WV children and families.
Yetty Shobo, WVPRC Evaluation Specialist and author of the report, projects substance abuse could cost WV’s welfare system more than $300 million by 2017 if current trends persist and intervention does not occur.
“The Financial Burden of Substance Abuse in West Virginia: The Welfare System” -- available at www.PrevNET.org -- is a continuation of a series initially funded by a federal Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention Block Grant administered by the WV Division of Justice and
Community Services. The present work is funded by the U.S. Center for Substance Abuse Prevention’s Prevention as Community Development: Projects of Regional and National Significance Grant and is the fourth in a series that examines the cost of drug and alcohol abuse to the criminal
justice, healthcare, education, welfare, and workforce systems in West Virginia. A comprehensive report, incorporating estimates from all these sectors, will be produced at the end of the project.
The WV Partnership to Promote Community Well-Being, created by Executive Order 8-04, is WV’s Governor-appointed substance abuse prevention and early intervention planning body. The Governor and the WV Partnership released a comprehensive, strategic plan for addressing substance abuse at a drug summit in November 2009. This latest funding study report was produced by the WV Prevention Resource Center, which staffs the WV Partnership and provides support for WV’s community prevention efforts.
Additional information about the WV Partnership, the WVPRC, and the Funding Study project is available at www.PrevNET.org.
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