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Mental health program targets those who ‘fall through the cracks’
BOARDMAN
Some residents suffering from mental disorders may end up living in their car, on the streets or being locked up in jail when they “fall through the cracks” of the social services system, social workers in the Mahoning Valley said.
A new “Adult Navigator” program launched by the Mahoning County Mental Health and Recovery Services Board with its partners, the Area Agency on Aging 11 and the Mercy Health Foundation, aims to widen the safety net by assigning a social worker to connect non-seniors who have mental health disorders with critical services.
“This navigator serves a small but at-risk population – adults too young to qualify for services through the [Area Agency on Aging] but unable to properly care for [themselves],” said Duane Piccirilli, board executive director. “The navigator completes a risk assessment for each of these individuals and then identifies and refers them to community resources that can meet their specific needs.”
After age 65, the county Adult Protective Services agency can step in.
“We’re finding there are a lot of adults under 65 … they are in situations where they need support. They might have mental health issues,” or they have no family support, he said. “There really wasn’t a safety net, for the most part.”
Doug Doyle, an Agency on Aging social worker who’s developed a broad network of contacts over various county systems across his more than 20-year career, is now employed part-time to cover the gaps in that safety net and link cases with the right remedy.
“It’s sort of a wraparound position where I try to coordinate two or three or four agencies to get the best possible outcome for an individual who may be in a crisis situation and we need to get them settled somewhere and get the right services in there,” Doyle said. “Our hope is we catch people before they end up on the streets. ... They might need some housing assistance, they might need any number of services that are out there that help with the homeless.”
MHRSB, the agency and Mercy Health each put up a third of the job’s $15,000 annual salary.
Doyle said unfortunately, the Mahoning County jail ends up being the “default” destination for those in crisis who haven’t had an official mental health diagnosis — it’s simply “a warm place to be,” he said.
Mahoning County Sheriff Jerry Greene said during a Thursday board of commissioners meeting the county jail is “the biggest mental health hospital in Mahoning County.” Of the jail’s about 500 inmates, about 30 percent require some type of anti-psychotic medication, he said.
MHRSB’s Stepping Up program, in coordination with the jail, identifies inmates suffering from mental disorders and helps destitute or derelict inmates with re-entry, offering mental health counseling and medication while in the jail and after-care when they get out. Before the program, once inmates were released from the jail, “nobody cared what they did or where they went or where their next meal was going to be,” Greene said Thursday.
The Stepping Up program connects inmates with service contacts on the outside that can help keep them from getting booked back into the jail “for really no reason at all,” he said.
MHRSB provides about $200,000 in mental health and addiction services in the jail, Piccirilli said.
“It’s all kind of a big package – getting people in the right spot to receive the right amount of services,” Doyle said. “If they come from the jail, our hope is that doesn’t happen again because we’ve set them up with mental health counseling, the right meds and a plan [for the future].”