Dubois County CARES gets $200,000 grant for youth substance prevention

Dubois County CARES has secured a $200,000 grant to widen its youth substance-use prevention and early intervention work across Dubois County, giving the longtime local coalition a new funding stream as it tries to reach students before alcohol and drug use becomes a deeper problem. The money will be distributed over two years beginning July 1, 2026, and includes support from the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration’s Division of Mental Health.

For CARES, the grant is less a start-over than an expansion of a mission that has been in place for years. The group says it works with youth in grades 6 through 12, along with parents and the broader community, to promote alcohol- and drug-free choices through education, skill-building and teamwork. CARES also says it relies on annual community assessments to identify the local conditions and root causes that increase substance-use risk, then uses that information to shape its prevention efforts.

That local-data approach matters because the grant is aimed at evidence-based programming, not one-time outreach. In practical terms, the extra money should allow CARES to reach more students in Jasper, Huntingburg, Ferdinand and the surrounding county, while strengthening the kind of early intervention that can matter most in middle school and high school. The real test over the next two years will be whether the organization can expand its footprint beyond a small circle of schools and families and show that its prevention work is reaching more of the county’s 6th through 12th graders.

CARES has been part of Dubois County’s prevention network since 2014, when it started under Tri-Cap sponsorship. The new award also follows a prior $125,000 Drug-Free Communities Support Program competing continuation grant in 2022, showing the group has already been able to attract outside funding to keep its work going. That history suggests the latest grant is not an isolated win, but another sign that local and state partners see youth substance prevention as a continuing need.

The county’s broader prevention structure reinforces that message. The Dubois County Comprehensive Community Plan identifies the Dubois County Advocacy for Recovery and Prevention Council as the local coordinating council, with April Jones listed as coordinator and 1 Courthouse Square in Jasper as the contact address. The council meets on the second Tuesday of every month except September, when grant application presentations are held, under a vision of “Hope, Healing, and Prevention.”

Statewide data collection also lines up with CARES’ work. The Indiana Youth Survey measures substance use, mental health, gambling and risk and protective factors among students in grades 6 through 12, and it is offered free to Indiana schools through state funding. For Dubois County, that means CARES is now better positioned to pair local programming with the same kind of student-level data that can show whether prevention efforts are moving the needle.