Mental Health Archives - Read. Think. Act.

Kimberly Boateng FCPS Student Representative 2019-2020

(July 17, 2019) Catherine Read interviews Kimberly Boateng, the new student representative to the FCPS School Board for the 2019-2020 school year. Kimberly is an incoming junior at Robert E. Lee High School, and was elected this past spring by the Student Advisory Council (SAC). She serve a one-year term starting in July, and will participate in School Board meetings as a non-voting member. Kimberly is the 49^th student representative to serve in this capacity.

Over the course of her academic career, Kimberly has attended seven different schools, six of them being within the FCPS system. Through this unique lens, Kimberly has gained a good snapshot of the county and has a lot of ideas based on her experiences. She understands the diversity, both from a racial and socioeconomic standpoint, and is able to use that understanding to help advance the issues that are most important to her.

Among the pressing issues at hand, Boateng believes that mental health, implicit bias awareness, the dress code, assistance for at-risk students, drug use, and punishment reform are most important.

Some of these issues dovetail with one another. Punishment reform merges in with the issue of implicit bias and at-risk students. She points out that the policy of suspending or expelling students is not working. If the goal is to reform the students and help them, then keeping them in school and making them aware of their mistakes, as well as teaching them how to avoid making the same mistakes in the future is the most important thing.

“The worst thing that a school can do” she says, “is give up on a child”.

Since she has been in so many different schools, Boateng has had the opportunity to see things that have worked well, and things that have not worked out the way that they were intended. She would like to highlight the creative, out of the box ideas that she has seen to be successful.

Boateng takes her role seriously, and hopes that the FCPS student body will reach out to her with their thoughts, ideas and observations. The school system is very large, and she believes the only way to be an effective representative is to be open and responsive to the student body that she represents. Her email is effective on July 1^st, and she hopes to start hearing from them with ideas and feedback for the new school year.

by Catherine Read

Community Healthcare in Virginia – Dr. Basim Khan of Neighborhood Health

(Feb 19, 2018) Catherine Read talks with Dr. Basim Khan, Executive Director of Neighborhood Health, a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) located in Northern Virginia. Neighborhood Health was started in an apartment complex by nurses from the Alexandria Health Department back in 1997, becoming an FQHC in 2004. In their first year as a clinic, they saw 1,500 patients and in their 20th year they saw 18,000 patients through their 12 clinics located in Alexandria, Arlington and Fairfax County.

Neighborhood Health provides an integrated medical home to community residents regardless of their ability to pay. Their goal is high quality healthcare that is affordable and accessible to everyone in the community. Their clinics provide Family Practice/Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Women’s Health, Behavioral Health Counseling and include health screenings, cancer screenings, on-site lab services, immunizations, mental health screenings, dental services and a pharmacy program. They provide language interpreters (sometimes via phone), offer sliding scales to patients who may have high deductibles for their health insurance plan, and provide medications to patients less expensively than through retail pharmacies. Community health centers provide primary healthcare to over 300,000 people in Virginia and to 27 million patients in the U.S. Providing high quality primary care delivers better health outcomes for patients and helps to drive down overall costs.

Dr. Kahn talks about how Neighborhood Health strives to serve as a patient advocate in a really “complicated health system.” In talking about issues of equity and social determinants of health, he points out that our healthcare and social services spending in this country is comparable to other developed nations, but we spend far more on healthcare and far less on social safety net services. Social determinants of health include factors such as education levels, income, the zip codes we live in, the type of housing and employment we have, and our access to adequate healthy food. Working to provide better equity in healthcare outcomes includes Neighborhood Health’s strong partnerships with other local agencies, non-profits and service providers. They work closely with local Community Services Boards to help patients get mental health services and case management when needed. They work with Departments of Health and Human Services that also provide employment assistance, and help with issues of aging and disability. This is the “community” in community health services that treat the whole patient through providing social services that impact health outcomes.

Neighborhood Health continues to expand their services, meeting patients where they are in the community. They currently work with Alexandria City Schools to provide dental care to low income students in 8 elementary school through a mobile bus that provides the services right on school grounds. That includes routine cleanings, x-rays, and fillings as needed. Catherine Read pointed out that this is an example of the type of partnership that is at the core of the Community School model – a model of education we don’t currently have in Virginia. Providing needed services to students through the school impacts educational and health outcomes for many students who lack access to things as basic as food, clothing, dental and healthcare, school supplies and tutoring.

Dr. Khan addresses public health issues such as the opioid crisis and how the trend of medicalizing so many issues has resulted in the over prescribing of pain medications. The epidemic of chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes and cancer are tied to social determinants, yet we seem to lack the political will to prioritize key things that need to be addressed, such as affordable housing, which impact health.

In the last segment, Medicaid Expansion in Virginia is addressed and what the impact would be on the patients Neighborhood Health serves. The most immediate impact would be the ability to refer patients to local specialists instead of having the University of Virginia as the only option. There are substantive discussions taking place during the 2018 Legislative Session in Richmond that have both parties negotiating terms that now include a “work requirement” proffered by the Trump Administration as an option states can elect to mandate. At the time of broadcast, Medicaid Expansion was still very much up in the air with the future outcome very uncertain.

For more information about Neighborhood Health visit www.NeighborhoodHealthVA.org, follow them on Twitter @NeighborhoodHth or on Facebook, or call their main number for assistance at 703-535-5568.

by Catherine Read

Fairfax County’s Diversion First Program with Laura Yager

(Aug. 2, 2017) Catherine Read talks with Laura Yager, of the Fairfax County Executive’s Office, about the Diversion First Program here in Fairfax County, Virginia. The initiative grew out of collaborative efforts among the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Department, Fairfax County Police and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisor’s Chairman, Sharon Bulova.

In 2015, Fairfax County Sheriff Stacey Kincaid organized an exploratory trip to Bexar County, Texas, to learn more about their model of Crisis Intervention Training (CIT). After 26 years in the Sheriff’s Department prior to her election, Sheriff Kincaid was struck by how many of those incarcerated in the county’s jail were suffering from mental health issues. Over a period of years, local jails in Virginia and across the country have become de facto psychiatric facilities. That presents situations for those who work in these facilities for which they have not been trained.

Crisis Intervention Training has been designed to help diffuse and de-escalate situations where law enforcements comes into contact with those in a mental health crisis, as well as those in the Intellectual and Developmental Disability community who may have trouble processing instructions or interpreting the actions of law enforcement officers. It’s not always evident to officers that someone they are engaged with is on the Autism spectrum or has a developmental disability. Families with older children in the disability community now have the option of requesting a CIT trained officer when they call 911 to help with a domestic situation where there is a possibility of harm to the child or to others in the home. Anyone phoning 911 can make that same request. CIT training is provided on a regular basis to the county’s law enforcement personnel to increase the percentage of officers on the force who have these skills.

The Merrifield Crisis Response Center (MCRC) was launched as part of this new effort to direct people who interact with law enforcement to the appropriate services. The MCRC is overseen by the county’s Community Services Board (CSB) and the goal it to triage what is causing the need for officer intervention and whether the person in custody needs to be in a hospital, a mental health care facility or should be taken to jail. There is still widespread stigma surrounding mental health issues and substance abuse. Too often the reluctance to acknowledge a problem leads to a lack of appropriate treatment and subsequent interaction with law enforcement. Laura Yager talked about a new program in Fairfax County called the Turning Point Program which addresses the specific needs of young people from 16 to 25 who experience a first episode of psychosis. The program helps them to create a treatment plan that keeps them in school, in their homes or in supported housing, and in their chosen community.

Mental Health First Aid Training is part of both Diversion First and the Turning Point Program’s agenda in raising awareness about how to recognize the signs that someone needs mental health services. Just like CPR training or regular first aid training, Mental Health First Aid Training is designed to help with evaluation skills and knowing the appropriate steps to take in seeking assistance for someone who is experiencing difficulties.

While Fairfax County does not have a Mental Health Docket, the Diversion First Program is working to train administrative staff in the courts, and magistrates as well, to recognize when mental health issues, addiction issues or intellectual disability issues are a factor in why defendants are coming before the court. Working at the pre-trial level, the CSB and Court Services Staff are evaluating cases early in the morning before defendants are brought before a judge. The goal of Diversion First is to put people in treatment programs where it is appropriate and not in jails where they become part of an endless cycle in and out of incarceration because the real issues that put them there are never addressed or resolved.

For more information about Diversion First, visit: http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/diversionfirst/