This photo from the C.O.P.E. Foundation 19 website shows an informational kiosk for the group. The organization’s founder is worried about funding.

The founder of a foundation that helps the children of opioid abusers says he is desperate for funding, after sources were pulled.

“The reason I’m getting desperate is that the funding is no longer geared toward children. It’s geared toward adults,” said Bill Matteson of C.O.P.E. Foundation 19. Matteson, an addiction survivor himself, started the foundation in 2021 to honor his son who died of a drug overdose.

The foundation is “an organization to help children who have lost a parent addicted to opioids by death, imprisonment, abandonment, or residing in addiction households,” according to its website, www.copefoundation19.com. “We are here to aid the children’s progress while living in their current situation or through the grief they may be experiencing. The C.O.P.E. Foundation works closely with all children through 18 years of age.”

The foundation sponsors a memorial area for victims of opioid abuse on Church Street in Fredonia.

C.O.P.E. enacts a healing process it calls “The Circle of Light,” according to its website. Client children are supposed to get counseling, social interaction opportunities, physical healing through sports activities, and work toward mental stability.

However, “Funding has gotten so bad we had to stop accepting new clients,” Matteson said. That has caused a dropoff in interest in the foundation’s services — “we’re not even getting a million phone calls anymore.”

He complained that Chautauqua County cut his funding.

The foundation is still doing a monthly event. “We play a movie in one room and have refreshments and activities … it gets everybody together with their families.”

Matteson added, “We still send people out for counseling but we can’t continue with personal services.” For example, the foundation was paying for kids interested in sports to attend a year of the program of their choice, but is no longer able to do so.

“Our job is to get them intertwined with new friends, safe friends. … It proves they’re not alone,” Matteson said.

But without an infusion of funding, he is not sure the foundation can continue. In addition to grant cuts, he said they no longer get funding from key sponsor ECR International.

Donations to the foundation can be made at Copefoundation19.com. Go to the “Donations” section of the website.