Court services director: drug trends shifting; Valley County youth programs gaining statewide attention

Valley County Court Services Director Phillips told commissioners on July 16 that court caseloads are rising and that the jurisdiction must keep training and programs current to respond to changing drug trends.

“It’s usually not just one thing…polysubstance abuse,” Phillips said, summarizing discussions from a recent Northwest Alcohol Conference. “We definitely have clients who don’t use the standard drugs…DXM, which is in cough medicines. We have clients who abuse cough medicine and how do you catch that, which we already have testing abilities to do that.”

Phillips said the county typically lags larger population centers on trends but said visitors and seasonal residents bring current patterns into the county. She described ongoing pretrial monitoring workloads and said summer events are contributing to higher caseloads: “Because this is the season of entertainment, people are coming up here overly entertaining, and so my caseload is rising.”

Phillips also noted positive attention for Valley County’s youth work. She said the Youth Advocacy Coalition sent four young people and a chaperone to the conference and that the chaperone returned with statewide connections and offers to share Valley County practices. Phillips said she was invited to attend an assessment-center symposium in Ohio and that she and local partners — including Ignite Idaho — are exploring ideas for sustaining and expanding community-based assessment and support services.

Phillips told commissioners she may travel to a national conference in Dallas in November and hopes to bring officers so local staff can access nationwide training on emerging drug trends.

No formal actions or vote items were associated with this report; the item was informational.