APPLETON, WI (WTAQ) – Fox Valley Technical College’s Learning Innovations team has been working with the National Alliance for Drug Endangered Children to create a mobile app that helps connect children with resources in their area.
The project has four phases. The first, which launches officially in September, focuses on getting help for victims.
“Folks that are in that situation, whether it’s children, family members, parents, grandparents, who are reaching out to find access to services are going to be able to use this mobile app. [We will] give away for free on all the app platforms and it’ll connect into the services within their own zip code or geographic region,” said National Alliance for Drug Endangered Children Executive Director, Scott Henderson. “If it’s a grandparent and they want to find services for the grandkids, and the grandkids are in another state, they’ll be able to select the state in the zip code or the geographic area. We’ll also use geo-tagging on the mobile application. It provides a little anonymity initially.”
Resources in any community will be localized through the app, so based on the location that the user is in (or location they specify), the corresponding results will be relevant to them.
Henderson says the app will have a national impact. There are as many as 10 million children impacted by substance misuse in their families.
The app is aimed to provide resources for people who need them in a way that is more comfortable, simple, and anonymous.
“There’s a lot of shame and embarrassment in living in that kind of a situation. So folks have a tendency not to reach out for the services in their area. So there is a pretty dynamic need to connect them to the services, and again, anonymity is a big piece of that,” Henderson told WTAQ News.
“No matter what walk of life people seem to come from, almost everybody has a smartphone now. This is our gateway to all the information in the world, and there really isn’t an app that serves to address this problem,” said FVTC Director of Learning Innovations Jay Stulo. “Oftentimes children and families are ashamed. They don’t want to talk about it, they don’t know who to ask. But everybody picks up the phone and goes to Google for everything, so we created an app that’s going to help with that. I think it’s really important.”
There are a number of different features that will be included in the app for people to relate to others, and realize that they are not alone in their current situation.
“We’re providing a variety of connection points, so people can see themselves in the stories and know that there are services. There is hope and a different path ahead, and that generational cycle of substance misuse can be broken,” Henderson said. “Video was one of the things that ranked really highly. They wanted to be able to see themselves in the story and connect that way. One of the other pieces that we’re going to add to the app is the ability for folks to share their own stories anonymously and provide that point of peer-to-peer connection.”
A video production crew was in Appleton on Thursday to create the content for the app. They filmed a series of scenes including a grandparent caring for children because their mother was in substance misuse, and a single father in a similar scenario with two kids.
“Some of them are informational and testimonials. The others are are really about storytelling, to depict a family that’s in crisis and show that there are resources to help. It’ll show before and after, and show that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel,” Stulo said. “These mock buildings that we have that we typically use for law enforcement and public safety training purposes – today, we’re using them as a movie set.”
The app will be available for free and aims to cater to three specific audiences: The victims – the children and families themselves, concerned community members who are looking for more information on how they can help, and professionals who are working in the field, like social workers and law enforcement.
Further phases of the project will involve in-depth training for professionals.
The project is funded by the Office of Victims on Crime, a division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
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