About

Hooked on Hope, Lamb County LEAF Drug Free Communities Coalition (HOHC) is funded through a 5-year Drug Free Communities (DFC) grant awarded to Our Place and operates through Lamb County.  Our Place is a Coalition member of the Llano Estacado Alliance for Families (LEAF). The grant was awarded $625,000 over the five-year period.

HOHC is a growing group of caring community individuals and organizations that are coming together to create a cultural framework of hope, with the goal of enabling our kids to make healthy choices. Through the education of parents, youth, and the general population about the risks of substance abuse and the benefits of good health, we hope to lower youth substance abuse in our community, thereby changing its legacy.

In 2003, there was a growing concern for our youth and families due to the large number of youths using drugs, teen pregnancy, grandparents raising grandchildren, and lack of supervision with the kids. A group of Lamb County citizens formed Our Place, a non-profit 501.c3 organization to try to address these issues. The City of Littlefield donated a building where a healthy drug-free environment could be provided to the youth. Since that time, Our Place has offered many services, from boxing classes to weekly leadership training, and hosted many events, from summer day camps to father-daughter dances and mother-son game nights.

Through the desire to help families and children, Our Place became a member of LEAF. In 2019, Our Place (the Lamb County sector of LEAF) was awarded the federal Drug Free Communities (DFC) grant.

A Cultural Framework

One way HOHC desires to change the legacy of Lamb County is through establishing a culture of hope through deeper relationship with the youth of our community. Research shows that regardless of the home-life a child may be in, they can be taught how to hope, which is the power that leads to success. Though we don’t control most of the risk in children, we do control much of the hope.

Adults who thrive after an “at-risk” childhood have some common experiences. The most prominent of these is the presence of caring adults in their young lives. Be they neighbors, family, teachers or bus drivers, these adults connected with, encouraged, questioned and believed in these kids. 

Using the Kids at Hope cultural framework, HOHC will train adults who come into contact with youth in the methodology of hope. 

For more details about Kids at Hope visit their website:

www.kidsathope.org

Llano Estacado Alliance For Families (LEAF) is a group of various entities and consumers that formed a Coalition to help our communities with mental health needs and to erase stigma of mental health.

This Coalition was formed in part to help our local Mental Health Authority.  Lamb County’s mental health authority is Central Plains Center which is located in Plainview. Central Plains Center covers 9 counties. The LEAF Coalition covers 11 because one of the counties, Floydada has two other counties that is located outside of the catchment area. Lamb County, Swisher County, Castro County, Hale County, and etc., we all have members that represent our counties.

The grant was written by Kay Brotherton for the Lamb County sector of LEAF. It was awarded to Our Place which is considered the Lamb County LEAF. The Lamb Juvenile Probation Department is also a LEAF coalition member. The intent of the grant is for Our Place in partnership with the Juvenile Probation and Lamb County as the grants operator to work with the whole community developing a drug-free community lifestyle.