HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE

Monday, March 21, 2022 - 10:30 AM

JoePete Wilson, Chairperson

Charles Harrington, Vice-Chairperson

Chairman Wilson called this Human Services Meeting to order at 10:30 am with the following Supervisors in attendance: Clayton Barber, Stephanie DeZalia, Derek Doty, Shaun Gillilland, Steve McNally, Noel Merrihew, Jim Monty, Matt Stanley, Ike Tyler Joe Pete Wilson, Margaret Wood and Mark Wright. Robin DeLoria, Charlie Harrington, Roy Holzer, Kenneth Hughes, Tom Scozzafava and Davina Winemiller was excused.

Department Heads present: Linda Beers, Dan Palmer, Judy Garrison, Michael Mascarenas, Heather Sheehan and Terri Morse.

Also present: Angie Allen, Stefanie Miller, Molly Colden, Melinda Morin, Emma Jean O’Kusky and Traci Ploufe

News Media: Tim Rowland – SUN

WILSON: I will call this Human Services Committee to order. I’ll welcome Mike Mascarenas from Social Services up to answer questions on his report.

MASCARENAS: Good morning. I will be very quick today. I know we have a couple presentations and I don’t want to keep you any longer than you need to be here. I do have a resolution; I need to ask the committee for my re-appointment this morning. Five years has went by pretty quickly. My appointment will expire next month in April and I’d like to ask for that this morning.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE RE-APPOINTMENT OF JOHN MICHAEL MASCARENAS TO THE POSITION OF COMMISSIONER OF SOCIAL SERVICES FOR A FIVE (5) YEAR TERM. Wright, Stanley

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion is unanimous. Thank you anything else?

MASCARENAS: All I will say this morning is summer is coming pretty rapidly. You’ll be seeing an email coming from Dan Sadowski in regards to some information we’re asking from you in terms of are you going to run, are you going to do food programs what you’re looking at. We have to start planning those trainings and things and know how many people we are going to have at them. The food stuff we still don’t information on the waivers. I know the last few years you’ve guys have run you’ve run under waivers in a different system we may need to look at alternatives in terms of getting approvals on your sites but once we know who’s going to be operational and who is not that will help send us in a direction that we need to in terms of getting those things accomplished.

Lifeguard training is happening currently we were able to get two classes approved for that. Once those classes are complete I’ll make sure those lists get to each and every one of your towns because I know you’re always struggling to hire those lifeguards for your local beaches.

MONTY: I will tell you right now Mike we are running that program.

MASCARENAS: Perfect. I figured you would. Awesome. That’s all I got unless you guys have questions on my report I will get out of here.

WILSON: Alright, thank you Mike.

MASCARENAS: Thank you.

WILSON: And we’re going to change the agenda a little bit Mental Health has a presentation so we’re going to move them to the end. So, next up is Public Health and Linda Beers.

BEERS: Good morning. I hope you get this report that Andrea Whitmarsh put so much time in and in color. Do you get it in email format? Oh, good because it doesn’t do justice when it’s in black and white in your program.

I’m going to just hit a couple of the key points of this. There’s lots to present to you today and I have resolutions as well. I thought I would start with this. If you look at our packet that we provided for you I just want to go over the new emphasis, personal responsibility for Covid and the better way to look at community levels. Essex County and most of the State of New York is considered a low level as of right now.

The next slides really talk about where we have been and where we are going and this slide presentation will show you how we decreased significantly. Real fast and if you flip to page 3, myself and Jessica Darney Buehler were grateful and really happy to go to Ticonderoga public elementary school the day masks came off and so we greeted the students and we were there to see things were not mandated but choice was given and many children still chose to wear a mask that day just so you’re aware and they chose that. Even if they came without them they were going in their pocket and putting it on because they were just not comfortable with that yet and I think everybody applauded their efforts to do whatever made them happy but you can see in the picture there were many kiddos coming off the bus without masks and they were just ecstatic. The older the grades, the happier they were so that’s in the report.

Flipping the page, goes on to and if you’re really new I hope that you take a moment core public health. Andrea went through all what core public health is and each one of the units in the public health department and what they do. I really want to talk a few things about maternal infant health. Maternal infant health is a requirement by New York State Law and I want to call attention that through attrition, retirements, and global pandemic, the department has lost much of the knowledge of families and most of the knowledge as standing as providers of these services. We are in the middle of regrouping and redoing our family health unit and we’re looking at Hudson Headwaters and a variety of partners to do something called The Family Connects which will be new in Essex County and it will universal home visiting for every baby born in Essex County. It will be something not done to my knowledge in any county in New York State and that’s of course, fingers crossed if we can employ a nurse but we are moving forward to do that.

Reproductive health, moving along. We are working with our school districts. We once were in every school in Essex County to talk about reproductive health. I think we start in third grade and move up to high school. I believe we were in three schools. We were in none during Covid so getting back in and I believe we have three schools already engaged and we have plan to have them all engaged again. This is a free service where we push into health classes. I will tell you, birth rates of high school students have gone up since we have not been in public schools prior to being in Covid and it actually correlates when we stopped being in schools and going up steadily since so hopefully this will help it will be one level to prepare against that.

Public Health- emergency preparedness my gosh, that’s what got us through Covid but I’d like to tell you we have a new woman, a new lady that we hired as PHEPR Coordinator and her name is Amber Levesque and she comes from Newcomb. We’re excited to have her. She actually is here from somewhere out South West where she worked on the Indian Reservation and ran casinos. She’s got an unbelievable wealth of knowledge and she ran the Government casino chain doing all the preparedness in making sure all the places were ready in events of all kinds of natural disasters and manmade ones if you know what I mean. So that’s exciting.

I’m going to skip over chronic disease and then I’m just going to call your attention to the Lead Poisoning prevention. I tell this to my Supervisors that there’s a thing in the Governor’s budget right now or a request, they are looking for over $30 million dollars to increase lead poisoning prevention. That is not more money, it’s the money required to do what the State mandated to do. The State lowered the lead level from ten to five and with that they didn’t give enough money to make that happen of course when you do that you double the amount of people that require that testing and the amount of time it needs to go out so there’s a big push in NYSAC and the Senate, you might have seen it while you were there. I think it has good traction and Governor Hochul absolutely has approved it.

And last but not least the 2022 Health Department organizational chart is there for you and you won’t be able to see it in the black and white version but I encourage you to look at it and you’ll look to see all the red. The red are people in a new position Covid and the Essex County Public Health unit, myself, Andrea Whitmarsh no myself, I’m the only one in the same position prior to Covid. I’m the only one. I will say I have no one in my staff that has the same title and there is only three employees left everybody else is gone and we have hired new people. They all came in in the last two years, we didn’t have any shortage of hiring people but when they came in all those titles you see before you all of those people were hired and what did I teach them? I taught them how to do Covid so they don’t know and there’s a big learning curve that we’ll move forward with and train everybody up to what is core public health so that’s my report.

And then, I’m going to go through quickly resolutions and I apologize because I have so many. Many of them are to move money forward and I’ve been instructed, I need to read each one so I’m going to just do that and I apologize for the drudgery of it all. I have a WIC grant to move $1,405.58, forward.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A BUDGET AMENDMENT IN THE WIC HEALTH DEPARTMENT INCREASING REVENUES AND APPROPRIATIONS IN THE AMOUNT OF $1405.58, CARRY OVER 2021 WIC GRANT. Woods, McNally

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion carries.

BEERS: I’m going to skip #2 and come back to it because it doesn’t have to do with that resolution so the next one is to move unexpended funds of $2,936.74, forward in the Public Health unit.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A BUDGET AMENDMENT IN THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT INCREASING REVENUES AND APPROPRIATIONS IN THE AMOUNT OF $2,936.74, CARRY OVER 2021 RURAL COVID FUNDS. Wright, McNally

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion carries.

BEERS: Thank you. The next one is Blue Cross Blue Shield they funded us during Covid to encourage Covid vaccination. We did not spend $2500.00, but we are moving it forward.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A BUDGET AMENDMENT IN THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT INCREASING REVENUES AND APPROPRIATIONS IN THE AMOUNT OF $2,500.00, CARRY OVER 2021 BLUE CROSS BLUE SHIELD DONATION. Stanley, Wood

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion carries.

BEERS: The next one is to move money that CDPHP gave us it’s $1,390.94 forward.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A BUDGET AMENDMENT IN THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT INCREASING REVENUES AND APPROPRIATIONS IN THE AMOUNT OF $1,390.94, CARRY OVER 2021 CDPHP DONATION. Wright, Stanley

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion carries.

BEERS: The next one is to move unexpended funds from 2021 budget forward to 2022 for what’s called Covid vaccine response, we call it CVDVAX to support Covid efforts and the total amount was $176,318.42 there’s a break down for you there and we’re going to move it forward.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A BUDGET AMENDMENT IN THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT INCREASING REVENUES AND APPROPRIATIONS IN THE AMOUNT OF $176,318.42, CARRY OVER 2021 COVID VACCINE RESPONSE. Stanley, Wood

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion carries.

BEERS: Also, the next one is MRC, our medical reserve Corp and this is a new grant. We were awarded again I think one of four in the State that got it $12,303.39.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A BUDGET AMENDMENT IN THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT INCREASING REVENUES AND APPROPRIATIONS IN THE AMOUNT OF $12,303.39, CARRY OVER 2021 MEDICAL RESERVE CORP. Wright, Stanley

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion carries.

BEERS: The next one is the budget for the Atkinson Award. This is a sweet woman that left us money, we’ve been moving it forward and slowly spending it year after year. We still have $41,535.29.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A BUDGET AMENDMENT IN THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT INCREASING REVENUES AND APPROPRIATIONS IN THE AMOUNT OF $41,535.29, CARRY OVER 2021 ATKINSON AWARD. Doty, Stanley

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion carries.

BEERS: Now I’m going to go back to resolution #2, because now I’m going to take you down the road of PAC. PAC is our Professional Advisory Council or Public Health Advisory Council and so I have a motion of a resolution to adopt the revised policies and procedures of the Professional Advisory Committee that Dr. Celotti and our PAC already adjourned and agreed to.

RESOLUTION ADOPTING AND APPROVING THE REVISED POLICIES AND PROCEDURES AND QUARTERLY REPORTS FOR THE HOME HEALTH SERVICES APPROVED BY THE PROFESSIONAL ADVISORY COUNCIL (PAC) ON 3/1/22. Wright, Wood

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion carries.

BEERS: Okay and I’m going to move you to really exciting news the Essex County Health Department is accepting approval from the Essex County Board of Supervisors aka the Board of Health that I’d like appoint some new members to our PAC our Professional Advisory Council. I’m going to name them, Megan Murphy is from the Trudeau Institute, Morgan Conley from ACAP, Katie Alexander is a Veterinarian in Essex County, Derek Doty is the Lake Placid Board of Supervisor and Max Thwaits will represent the Office of Emergency Services so we would like to offer them to our slate.

RESOLUTION APPOINTING MEGAN MURPHY, MORGAN CONLEY, KATIE ALEXANDER, DEREK DOTY AND MAX THWAITS TO THE ESSEX COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT PROFESSIONAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE (PAC) AND THE PUBLIC HEALTH ADVISORY COUNCIL. Stanley, Wright

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion carries.

BEERS: And the last one is to accept the quarterly reports from the Public Health Unit which is PHAC the Public Health Advisory Committee at the 3/1/2022 meeting.

RESOLUTION ADOPTING AND APPROVING THE REVISED POLICIES AND PROCEDURES AND QUARTERLY REPORTS FOR THE PUBLIC HEALTH UNIT APPROVED BY THE PUBLIC HEALTH ADVISORY COUNCIL (PHAC) ON 3/1/22. Wood, McNALLY

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion carries. All set? Any questions for Linda before she goes?

GILLILLAND: Not a question, congratulations to you and your team over the last two years we are back down to low transmission. Unfortunately, it looks like the board is on the wane, the battle has been fought and this board took a hit just this last week so I want to encourage everybody to emphasis in your towns about doing basic preventative measures because this disease is now endemic not epidemic. We went down to this NYSAC thing and four of us came home with Covid.

BEERS: Completely vaccinated people.

GILLILLAND: With all of us vaccinated so I will say, even working through this the last two years I didn’t realize how much of a son of a bitch that disease is. It hit me like a bus and I think the other guys are saying the same thing so it’s not over, it’s out there and if you let your guard down it’s going to get you and it’s not a pleasant experience. I did take the antivirals, I will say that they work rather well for an ancient guy like me and I would encourage people to do that all I got was a bad taste in my mouth you know, science has proven it so be careful of this disease, it’s still out there and encourage your people and families to be safe. I went through isolation and now I’m on my second five days of wearing a mask in public so it’s not bad but boy, if it spread to my 90-year-old parents, from what I went through I’m sure it would kill them. Word is it’s still there, it’s not going away we’re going to have it here all the time.

BEERS: Thank you. That’s really great. The other thing that Shaun said it quickly is why it’s important to test, people yeah, I’ve got Covid, I think I do or whatever. If you test and you’re positive you should immediately call your doctor. There are four antivirals out there and as Shaun said, he took it and he felt immediately better after the first dose. It is really important to do that. You don’t need to linger and you never know how long Covid lasts. You might think oh, it’s minor and then four days later you go, oh, I wished I had called and there is a time frame in which you can take those antivirals so it’s really important it’s test to treat. That’s our new thing. Test to treat. If you know you’re positive call your doctor and have a conversation they might tell you, you don’t need it or you could choose to do it so thank you for calling that out.

WILSON: Thank you Linda.

BEERS: Thank you.

WILSON: Alright, Office for the Aging Dan is going to represent Office for the Aging today.

PALMER: Krissy called in, she’s got some Covid issues herself in her home so she wasn’t able to get here. She does have a request for some resolutions. A resolution authorizing a budget amendment increasing revenues and appropriations in the amount of $4,500.00 for a Lifetime Arts Inc. grant and further authorizing to enter into an MOU to host two creative aging programs I think she describes those in the packet. That’s money given to us to set up this grant program for some of the elderly.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A BUDGET AMENDMENT IN THE OFFICE FOR THE AGING DEPARTMENT INCREASING REVENUES AND APPROPRIATIONS IN THE AMOUNT OF $4,500.00, FOR A LIFETIME ARTS INC. GRANT AND FURTHER AUTHORIZING TO ENTER INTO A MOU TO HOST TWO CREATIVE AGING PROGRAMS. Stanley, Wood

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion carries.

PALMER: The other resolution she has, authorizing a budget amendment increasing revenues and appropriations in the amount of $9,756.22, it’s carry over funding from the 2021 Title IIIE funds.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A BUDGET AMENDMENT IN THE OFFICE FOR THE AGING DEPARTMENT INCREASING REVENUES AND APPROPRIATIONS IN THE AMOUNT OF $9,756.22, CARRY OVER 2021 UNEXPENDED TITLE IIIE FUNDS. Wright, McNally

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion carries.

PALMER: There is a resolution authorizing the County Chairman or County Manager to execute a contract amendment with North Country Home Services in the amount of $9,756.22 for Title IIIE Respite Care services. That was the grant in the previous resolution, this is how it’s being spent.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE COUNTY CHAIRMAN OR COUNTY MANAGER TO EXECUTE A CONTRACT AMENDMENT WITH NORTH COUNTRY HOME SERVICES IN THE AMOUNT OF $9,756.22, FOR TITLE IIIE RESPITE CARE SERVICES. Stanley, Doty

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion carries.

PALMER: And the final one is a resolution authorizing a budget amendment increasing revenues and appropriations in the amount of $78,041.27, and this unspent funds from the ACAP program for the Nutrition program.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A BUDGET AMENDMENT IN THE OFFICE FOR THE AGING DEPARTMENT INCREASING REVENUES AND APPROPRIATIONS IN THE AMOUNT OF $78,041.27, CARRY OVER 2021 UNEXPENDED TITLE IIIC2 ADIRONDACK COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAM FUNDS. Stanley, Wright

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion carries. Thank you. Anything else?

PALMER: I think that was it.

WILSON: Alright, any questions that Dan might be able to answer on Office for the Aging? Okay, then Mental Health and Terri Morse.

MORSE: Good morning everyone. So we are trying to keep our presentation to ten minutes because I know you have another meeting after this at 11:00, so I’m going to introduce the BRIEF coalition which stands for Building Resilience in Essex Families and I also want to thank the Board of Supervisors for supporting BRIEF when you agreed to allow us to create the coalition in 2019 so you deserve an update.

BRIEF was created when several Essex County leadership decided that there was value in taking the proactive approach in working with families rather than waiting for a more serious problem showed up. We also decided that working in silos and while we collaborate rather well with one another, that we really didn’t have a good handle on what each other were doing and that while really great things were being accomplished by us as individual entities we could always build capacity and build relationships. There are gaps that need filling and unintentional duplications needing clear lines.

So the system of care has been around since the 1980’s and honestly Essex County has been down this road before but there’s something different about how it’s being approached this time. In our presentation members of the BRIEF Executive Committee are going to share some examples of what we’ve accomplished since its inception also, as a result of being awarded the four year SAMSA grant, which stands for Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration which is a Federal grant, this has allowed us to implement some pretty effective programs throughout the county. You’re going to receive a lot of information over the last ten minutes so we did give you a packet of information, there’s more in the packet then what we’re going to review today but before we discuss this particular slide I’d like to introduce you to the BRIEF coalition staff, Stefanie Miller is our Coalition Coordinator and she is a full time staff member and Molly Colden our Outreach Coordinator who works twenty-one hours a week, while they are not BRIEF their skill of organization creativity, vision and convening has helped BRIEF become what it is today. Their energies assist the success of the Government’s committee which is Alan Jones from ACAP, Angie Allen from DSS, Melinda Morin who is a committee family representative, myself from Mental Health, Heather Sheehan from Probation, Linda Beers of the Health Department and Tracy Ploufe of the Prevention Team. We hope you enjoy our brief presentation.

So, I’m going to talk about this slide and then I’m going to pass it off to some of my team members. The B and R of BRIEF stand for building resilience and this slide demonstrates how those at the BRIEF table are doing just that by engaging multiple Essex County department within the community, based organizations with schools in each and every one of your communities along with members of community BRIEF’s goal as Melinda Morin shared, people working together to improve society get great things done.

So, how are we building resilience? We are focusing, in the upper left hand corner, we are focusing on the relationships between education systems and the human services provider systems. We are making sure that the voice of the community is also included at the table. We don’t want to build a system for the community, we want to build it with the community and because we are shifting the focus from a reactive system to a proactive system one way to do that is to provide more parent support so several of our organizations are improving on providing parent training, support and education. BRIEF is also putting much effort into building capacity with the provider system by coordinating our services so the lower right hand corner, throughout today’s presentation you will receive more detailed information about how we are using economies of scale for workforce development. So now Angie Allen from DSS is going to share with you how building resilience across the lifespan.

ALLEN: Good morning. So as you can see, we start with a little one and work our way up. This screen to the BRIEF coalition and Essex County is probably one of the most important ones because it breaks down the system to the people that we serve right? So, when you build resilience it’s about detecting factors so therefore you’re helping someone overcome adversity through their life. We know that the population in Essex County is actually made up of pretty much of the elderly so what BRIEF is recognizing is the need to build resilience throughout ones lifespan right, so we are working with Office for the Aging, we’re working with the DA’s office, we’re working with the Adult Protective Services to address the needs of every generation that you see up here but most importantly, when we talk about prevention and proactive as you guys know, near and dear to my heart is child abuse and neglect right? So what we have in Essex County is a pretty significant system of generational poverty, generational neglect, generational abuse, generational lack of resources so we are raising the same children we raised ten years ago, twenty years ago our numbers in DSS where foster care, preventive and CPS units remain the same they’re not going down which speaks to me saying, that what we’ve done is not working so we need to do it differently. So we start with the little ones and we’re building programs through the zero to five mental health services, we’re working closely with the Department of Health, we’re working closely with Pediatricians and Schools and ACAP to start building those tools and skills our little ones need so they don’t go to Heather Sheehan from Probation and now are looking at our jails as adults right and then they are not being grandparents having to raise our kids. We have a huge population right now in Essex County of grandparents raising children, they don’t want to do it they are tired so when you have a little one that’s three and all like trauma, scared, anxious and you have a 75-year-old grandparent having to raise that child, there’s no success there. So, again this one means the most important one, it talks about resiliency, talks about prevention, talks about proactive services. What is key is the next couple of individuals that are going to join us and I don’t have a watch, I have no idea what time it is but I like to talk and I love microphones but I’m going to have to pass it off to Traci Ploufe from the Prevention Team, Heather Sheehan from Probation and Molly Morin from the Youth Advocate Program help me welcome them please.

MORIN: So we have been focusing on the school age as Angie’s slide as we go through our lifespan and so one of the things that we have been really intentional about is outreaching to each school making sure that we are having conversations with school administrators, school counselors in every district so that we’re able to make things that are useful. We talk with them rather than about them. How many people get programs shoved in our faces that aren’t very useful to the things that we are going through so interfacing with all fourteen districts. We’ve had a very surprising and positive response especially being in the middle of Covid so we’ve had high engagement from seven school districts. We have five school districts that are actively part of our school meetings that meet every single month. We’ve had them that receive training. We’ve had 175 school members receive Mind Up training, we have resiliency trainers, we have two trainers now trained in Mind Up to do things in schools so we are working together to make all of that happen. So I have Traci who is the leader of our school outreach group, here to talk more about what it looks like with us all working together in BRIEF for the different schools.

PLOUFE: Good morning. So, it’s 11:00 so, quickly so, I’m the new Executive Director for the Prevention Team and the Prevention Team is such a small workforce and so what the BRIEF has done is it’s created a resource and there’s three trainees it has just been a beautiful alliance right, so we don’t have to travel far in regards to trainings the knowledge is great and we’re able to infuse that in the school system. Another big thing that you guys all know is data is really important, data is important for funding so BRIEF has been a wonderful opportunity to engage with in regards to grants so I’ve been able to secure a countywide grant for schools for teens right, so I will be able to launch that in the fall so it’s been just such a beautiful opportunity to be able to connect with the school systems, to be able to connect with other systems of care and being new it has been a beautiful beginning to a new journey so thank you for that.

SHEEHAN: Hello again, so Probation invested in Mind Up with funding from the North Country Regionally Justice Team and this program will benefit youth and families that we serve. Currently Mind Up is in the following school districts, Boquet Valley, Moriah, Crown Point and Ticonderoga and we’re hoping to eventually expand into all districts within our county and we recently had which is wonderful two trainers complete the Mind Up train the trainer program and I believe they are from Crown Point and Saranac so that is also a great opportunity for everybody so I will pass it along to Molly.

COLDEN: So we feel very lucky because we are all at the table we’re all having these conversations, we all want the same things, we’re able to bring in funding braided from all these different sources we had DSS, Safe Harbor funding be able to do resilience training so we now we have things that are at our fingertips that we can offer to schools and we have 26 trainers in this county that can go into any organization or any school today and train about resiliency. This idea of having external and internal factors that can build us up against the inevitable things of the world that are going to beat us down so we can be healthier as we go through our life. So this next slide is going to be Emma Jean from ACAP and Angie again talking about parent support.

O’KUSKY: Good morning. We are in our second year of our new training parenting program through ACAP. We offer the services in our training facility at ACAP in Elizabethtown. We offer the services and classes in the community. We are also using the program as supervisor visitation and we have started at the Essex County Jail. On the slide, I shared some comments from some of the families that have gone through the program. As Mr. Feeley said, as in the jail the inmates are allowed to choose whether they want to participate in the program or not which is really neat there is a waiting list at the jail at this time for the services and I also want to take time to thank Mr. Tyler, Mr. Monty and Mr. Holzer for being part of our ACAP board and sharing our mission and vision. Being part of the BRIEF coalition and assisting families and making changes is very rewarding and I’m proud to part of the ACAP team.

ALLEN: So what is again, near and dear to DSS is Emma Jean is working with the parents of the children that we are trying to prevent child abuse and neglect with right so they are working with our foster parents. Emma Jean provides a supervised visitation program which is called the coach family visit model where parents are handing or they are being appointed they are debriefing, they are prepping, they are holding the hands of Emma Jean while trying to parent in a different way and that level of support can vape away because we’re also working with Cornell Cooperative Extension, we’re working with Essex County Mental Health so we have the ability to provide as much handholding when that is necessary because it is necessary right, we have parents that never learned how to parent themselves so we need to start where they are but then we can fade away and utilize the supports of other agencies in the community to be able to try a less invasive program. The goal for foster care is really education to parents right. Without parent’s support, without parent work groups, without parent peer groups we’re not going to be able to return the kids that unfortunately CPS needs to take in, home to their parents so this is critical to constituents in Essex County. I will know pass it off to Linda Beers.

BEERS: Actually Angie did a fabulous job in starting this when she did the half ways to child to adult this is really about early intervention and coordination of services between all of our organizations as you know in the Public Health Department we have family health I told you about, maternal child health, we have WIC and we have children Services. What we didn’t have for a period of a long time was any ability to do childhood mental health and social emotional health and through the coalition we were able to bridge that gap develop and train providers to help and do those services for children. You can read this slide. Probably one of the most important things was Lucianna Celotti says, we have more resources now, and clinicians that we can refer to when children and families need social emotional support. After Covid I think we found more than ever, we found families repeatedly that couldn’t make it five days right, actually the original quarantine was fourteen and time and time and time again I came to the board and asked for money to buy milk and eggs because these families didn’t have food for them. This coalition and through all of these programs we are going to hope to change that and preventively go out and make these families stronger through resiliency.

MORSE: This slide is important to you as the Board of Supervisors to know because if I was sitting in your chairs I would be like this is great but where, you know what is this going to save us financially? And we believe that by providing a system of care we can reduce costs because what we can do is we, by improving parenting there will be less children in foster care that reduces the cost of DSS. I mean, I jokingly say sometimes I’m trying to put myself out of business, I’m trying to reduce the need for mental health, DSS, ACAP services, Probation, Jail and by improving community and community member resilience the need for incarceration will reduce, thus saving the county money by improving the overall system the need for higher levels of care such as sending people to the hospital will reduce, thus Medicaid expenditures will go down and if we provide proactive systems ones that are working together crisis services and inpatient needs will also reduce. What will it mean for your communities? They will be safer, the workforce will be stronger, more capable and more emotional stable and schools will be able to focus on the educational needs of students rather than on the behavioral or parenting problems. We’re fortunate that we began to developing BRIEF in our system of care before Covid because by having it in place it can act as a safety net for the emotional challenges that are most likely to arise as time goes by because now has come off Covid. So we’re excited about what BRIEF will bring to not only individual members but also the bigger community and now Stefanie and Molly are going to take us home, the last slide.

COLDEN: So we are focused on what we as a group can do for the county for all of our residents, all of our kids but there are some stuff that you can do for us to help us get where we want to go. So something we would love is to be able to meet with each of you. We have a pulse of what’s going on in your communities what your needs and what your resources are because we’re integrated with the schools but we’d love to hear from you guys, your voices. What do you see as big gaps, what do you see as the biggest concerns for your families right now? We would love to have that back and forth so we’d love to meet with you specifically. We would love for you to come to our meetings we see some familiar faces Mr. Monty thank you for joining us. We would love for you to hear what we’re tackling to have your voices be heard at that table so we know what we can do to kind of fill those needs and then, to support us. Support our resolutions as we go forward with this work. Anything that comes across your desk that might be moving us forward we would super appreciate. Thank you.

MILLER: Thank you for your patience as we took a little bit more of your time but also help us identify funding the work that has been coordinated with Molly and I have done with 1.5 FTE and it’s grant funded so we hope to keep doing it. Share our BRIEF resources and trainings. There is a single page in your packet that has information upcoming trainings and our website. Stop by our office, we have coffee, we’re in the Community Resource Building we’d love to sit down with you and chat and get to know you so thank you so much everybody that participated and support this work.

MORSE: Thank you Stefanie.

WILSON: Thank you very much.

MORSE: Do you have any questions or comments for us about BRIEF?

MONTY: I just want to thank you all for what you do. It’s an amazing. I encourage you to join in on some of these calls and the meetings that they have. Someone who has worked with youth in the communities for many years, the need is there and I think you hit the nail on the head we start proactive instead of reactive, instead of once the horse gets out of the barn close the door, let’s keep the horse in the barn and try to make him healthy and I commend you for what you’re doing.

MORSE: Thank you.

DEZALIA: I’d like to add to that. A few of the workshops that I went to at NYSAC, I’m just thinking about this program and it is exactly what they are saying our communities need is programs like this and when you had the slide up about supervisor, what is this going to save you, you were talking about money I think it is going to save our communities, it’s not about money.

MORSE: Thank you very much. I appreciate it and I appreciate the coalition team members that drove all the way from Ticonderoga in some cases to be part of our presentation. So I do have three resolutions. One of them is related to the BRIEF coalition so we are developing an early social emotional development service through something called Docs for Tots and it’s connecting Pediatricians with kind of the rest of us and we are, that is something that has while it’s happening some, not that it’s not happening but we don’t have a good system for how to make sure that if there is an identified child or family that may need for example, mental health services we don’t have a good system for referring them to our organization so the first resolution is to develop that program. All of the expenditures are funded by the SAMHSA grant.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN EARLY SOCIAL EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT SERVICE IN THE MENTAL HEALTH DEPARTMENT THROUGH DOCS FOR TOTS. Wright, Wood

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion carried.

MORSE: And then as the Director of Community Services I have a resolution regarding our membership, as the resolution is stated terms are also stated on that resolution.

RESOLUTION APPOINTING JENNIFER PATCHING AS A MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY SERVICES BOARD FOR A TERM EFFECTIVE 4/1/22 THROUGH 12/31/25 AND FURTHER APPOINTING JENNIFER PATCHING TO THE MENTAL HEALTH SUBCOMMITTEE FOR A TERM EFFECTIVE 4/1/22 -12/31/23 AND JENNIFER ROWLEDGE (TERM 2/1/22 – 12/31/23) AND VICKIE FERGUS (TERM 4/1/22- 12/31/22) AS MEMBERS OF THE DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE. Wood, Wright

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion carried.

MORSE: And my last resolution is to continue a contract with Dr. Maria Rheaume of Stepping Stones Psychological and Behavioral Supports, for six months.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE COUNTY CHAIRMAN OR COUNTY MANAGER TO EXECUTE A SIX (6) MONTH CONTRACT EXTENSION WITH STEPPING STONES PSYCHOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL SUPPORTS, PLLC. Doty, Wood

WILSON: Any questions? All in favor aye, any opposed – motion carried.

MORSE: That concludes my report.

WILSON: Any final questions for Terri? Alright, thank you very much.

MORSE: Thank you very much.

MONTY: I just have a couple quick announcements. I received notice last week that our Children’s Development Center in Lewis is probably going to be closing the end of June which doesn’t help our current day care situation. The biggest concern is they can’t find help. They can’t find people to work there so that’s not a positive.

The other is on April 23^rd it’s national day of caring obviously national but United Way is promoting it. If you have some community based project in your communities we encourage you to contact United Way they may be able to help you find help to do those projects or to do them yourself on that day, Saturday, April 23, thank you.

WILSON: Thank you. Anyone else have anything? Alright, we’re adjourned. Thank you everyone.

As there was no further discussion to come before this Human Services Committee it was adjourned at 11:20 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Judith Garrison, Clerk

Board of Supervisors