Behavioral health experts in McLean County have determined five mental health needs to focus on addressing through the end of 2025 in the community.
In short, they are to educate on area resources, advance services and access for vulnerable populations, increase safe, temporary shelter, expand the behavioral health workforce and explore opportunities to share health data across service providers.
The Behavioral Health Coordinating Council [BHCC] — an independent advisory body comprised largely of mental health and substance abuse experts — decided on these strategic priorities during planning meetings about three weeks ago. It’s the first time the BHCC has created this type of curated guidance, resulting from recent restructuring.
Director of Behavioral Health Coordination Marita Landreth said the idea was to have goals that were “as action-oriented as possible,” to help steer short-term behavioral health plans.
Previously, BHCC members largely focused on at-large strategies derived from the Mental Health Action Plan [MHAP], a roughly 150-page document with just around 50 different recommendations for long-term change.
Landreth said having annual goals on top of the overarching roadmap the MHAP provides gives the BHCC a clearer purpose.
“We're focusing in on a specific time frame, which is going to give us a lot more opportunity to focus on the needs right now,” Landreth said, adding that the BHCC will still update the MHAP every three years or so, and is scheduled to revisit the document in 2025.
Given the new priorities, Landreth said future meetings should be more fruitful. She pointed out that they were “a little stagnant” before, which is part of the reason County Board Chair Catherine Metsker previously told WGLT she wanted to restructure in the first place.
Over the next few months, Landreth said a key goal for the BHCC will be to more clearly define the financial commitment each strategic priority may require and develop a proposal of sorts for newly created Mental Health and Public Safety Fund Advisory Council [FAC] to evaluate as it determines how to allocate taxpayer dollars for the 2025 county budget.
Funding and initiatives for the five priorities do not come from taxes alone, though. As has always been the case with the BHCC, members are expected to think of initiatives their organizations can introduce without taxpayer dollars, such as through external grants.
In this way, the strategic priorities apply to the community as a whole — not just local government.
Interim CEO and Executive Director of PATH Crisis Center Adam Carter started attending BHCC meetings following the restructuring. He said the nonprofit is already addressing the education priority through a puppet show geared toward helping children understand the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
“We know children don't have a permanency understanding of death, but they understand pain, and they understand not wanting to be in pain,” Carter said, adding that he’s had conversations during his career in the field with youth as young as four who’ve expressed suicidal ideation.
PATH’s homeless services division is also helping the region secure grant funding for permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing programs. Carter added that it’s possible Central Illinois could wind up with about $2 million for those initiatives, which would directly address the issue of safe and temporary shelter.
Other strategic priorities, including the bullet point on “create[ing] a governance group to explore requirements for standard data collection and establish a template business agreement (BAA) for information sharing,” may take more time to implement.
Creating a behavioral health database has been a county goal for years, but has largely been stalled due to patient privacy concerns.
Kevin McCarthy, a town of Normal Town Council member and BHCC representative, said agreeing to share data would be a major step forward for the county, and is something Normal has been interested in doing for a while.
He listed questions he thinks this type of data share could help answer.
“How do we assess what we what we're doing? How good or needy are we in in this area? And then, how do we start to define what it is that we're actually going to achieve, what is better and what is best?” he said.
Donna Boelen, a Bloomington City Council member and a BHCC representative, said she imagines some of the priorities may not be resolved by the end of 2025.
“It may end up being complicated, and it may carry over to the next year,” Boelen said. “You can set strategic goals, but to actually accomplish them, you may run into barriers, roadblocks, and have to pivot.”
However, Boelen said she hopes the BHCC can close the loop on as many strategic priorities as possible.
