Community and Family Resources asks Wright County for $7,200 to continue seventh-grade life-skills classes

Shelley Ziegel, grant and contract manager with Community and Family Resources, gave the Wright County Board of Supervisors an annual update on the agency’s prevention and treatment work and requested $7,200 in fiscal year 2026 to support a life-skills curriculum for seventh graders in Clarion.

Ziegel said the agency’s largest award is the Integrated Provider Network grant, which supports strategies the agency will continue through June 30 of the current grant cycle; the next grant cycle with the administrative service organization is expected to begin in July 2025. She said the agency also is part of an 11-county tobacco grant won through an RFA process and that the organization submitted two other grants serving neighboring Humboldt and Webster counties focused on alcohol use among people 45 and older.

Ziegel described several prevention strategies funded under the Integrated Provider Network award, including Generation Rx (a prescription-medication safety curriculum for older adults), school policy work to strengthen or adopt substance-related policies informed by marijuana-related data, and a project focused on establishing workplace gambling policies targeted to manufacturing employers. Under the tobacco grant, she said staff are working on educating community members about the health effects of electronic smoking devices and promoting quit-line referrals through systems change with health-care providers.

Ziegel outlined treatment and recovery services the agency operates: residential treatment and withdrawal management in Fort Dodge, recovery housing in Webster City (reported recently full), medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder, and local outpatient counseling (Clarion office staffed Wednesdays and Fridays). She said last fiscal year 2 percent of the 5,832 people served in treatment listed Wright County as a residence; alcohol was the most common primary drug of use followed by methamphetamine and marijuana.

For fiscal year 2026 the agency requested $7,200 to support staff salaries, training supplies and travel for life-skills training in Clarion; Ziegel told the board the program completed one full set of 15 classroom sessions and is seeking county support to continue the work. The board had follow-up questions about coordination with county public health and opioid-funded documentation; supervisors said they would take the request under advisement and that staff should coordinate with Public Health’s Sandy McGrath on opioid-funded reporting requirements.