Dane County Bolsters Commitment to Community Mental Health Services

By Dane County Executive Joe Parisi

Community challenges require solutions from an entire community, and that’s why Dane County government continues to prioritize new ways to expand mental and behavioral health services into our schools and now starting in 2020, our community centers. As County Executive, each fall I introduce a budget for the coming year that reflects where I think our community’s greatest needs are. Similar to past years where county-led efforts like the Building Bridges School Based Mental Health Teams grew to school districts countywide, my focus for the coming year remains on what we can do to help kids and families struggling with mental health and addiction.

All too often, families across our community experience the unrivaled pain of losing a loved one at the hands of mental illness or addiction. A member of Dane County’s family lived this tragedy earlier this year when Emergency Management Director Charles Tubbs and his wife Cynthia lost their son, C.J. Tubbs. To honor his life, and all the lives cut short by similar tragedies, my 2020 budget creates the “C.J. Tubbs Fund for Hope, Healing and Recovery.” This new $1.5 million county grant program will enhance community based mental health and addiction services to assist those suffering from the effects of severe mental illness and drug or alcohol addiction.

I’m also proposing new investments in our neighborhood and community centers. Be it through recreation, tutoring, meals, or youth mentoring—our neighborhood and community centers are an invaluable resource for our younger residents. Childhood mental health, trauma, and poverty are all barriers to the future success of young people in the community, and our neighborhood and community centers often see these effects firsthand. My 2020 budget proposal includes over $600,000 in new county funds for community centers to help advance long standing county policy priorities like reducing poverty, improving mental health services for young people, and bringing partners together to support families.

The approach of meeting youth where they are at to provide key services is similar to our Building Bridges School Based Mental Health Teams program, which focuses on mental health efforts with young people and families with school-aged children. The program has grown to be an over $1 million a year effort working directly with young people, their parents, and teachers in nearly five dozen Dane County schools. My 2020 budget adds the $40,000 needed for Building Bridges to be offered year-round in the Monona Grove School District—the latest to join the program.

My proposal also includes $200,000 to bolster mental health services for older populations. These dollars will fund two full-time mental health professionals as part of a pilot project to assist non-Medicaid eligible adult seniors. The staff will work with Senior Focal Point case managers to help keep seniors who experience chronic mental illness living independently. Direct intervention like this can help with food security and other living considerations that may otherwise be affected by the toll that severe mental illness takes on daily functioning.

Each year, more than $63.5 million in Dane County funds go to support community based mental health treatment and services—a figure that has more than doubled over the past decade. I look forward to making these additional investments in mental health services in 2020 to further benefit our residents.

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