Hunts of Fayetteville Honor Daughter with $100,000 Gift to Arkansas Cares at UAMS
| NOV. 7, 2002 | J. B. and Johnelle Hunt of Fayetteville surprised their daughter, Jane Hunt Hardin of Little Rock, yesterday with a gift of $100,000 in her honor to help mothers with substance abuse problems and their children.
The Hunts presented the gift to the Arkansas Center for Addictions Research, Education and Services (Arkansas CARES), a program of UAMS Psychiatry, in a ceremony at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Tues., Nov. 5.
Mrs. Hardin has been a volunteer and supporter of Arkansas CARES.
The Hunts have made past gifts to Arkansas CARES, the Harvey and Bernice Jones Eye Institute, and the Arkansas Cancer Research Center at UAMS. Mrs. Hunt is on the advisory board of the eye institute.
Arkansas CARES recently received a prestigious Gold Award from the American Psychiatric Association. The program offers intensive treatment for drug addiction in combination with mental health care for mothers and children and lessons about parenting, finding a job, paying bills, and other life skills. Its leaders say the comprehensive residential program is more effective at boosting troubled families into long-term independence than typical drug treatment, which may consist only of outpatient therapy, or prison, which forces children into foster care. Women and their children live together at Arkansas CARES while the women get “clean” and many learn, for the first time, how to be good mothers. The program is an innovative approach to breaking the cycle of childhood abuse, mental illness, drug addiction, prostitution and crime, poor parenting, and loss of parental rights.