Mercer County Behavioral Health Outreach Project

The project was designed to increase the access of preventive and proactive behavioral health care for these populations by providing outreach, training and interventions through an integrated network of services serving children, families, schools and communities.

The first significant problem encountered was the difficulty in obtaining the parental permission forms that were needed before the case managers could meet with the students in the various school districts. The forms were sent home to parents but because many did not understand exactly what services were being provided and also because of privacy issues, many parents were reluctant to sign the forms. We used community meetings, presentations at clubs and of course many phone calls to parents to try to explain the importance of this paperwork to the success of our grant. By the second year of the grant, this problem became less of an issue, but was nevertheless a continuing problem.

A second problem of significance was getting community members to attend our meetings that were centered on sharing behavioral health information. Several times we brought in speakers with timely information on child rearing, farm-related health issues, and attitudes and behaviors affecting students, only to be met with very minimal turnouts. Even though we advertised through newspapers, radio, and flyers sent home with students, our attendance was minimal. It seemed that in our small communities, there were often too many other time demands and these informational offerings were not deemed as important as sports and other social gatherings.

We also underwent a site visit/performance review from the Office of Rural Health Policy in Kansas City, MO in the spring of 2007.

It's difficult to state in a narrative the outcomes achieved with the grant funds. Some of those would include: Training of Instructional Behavioral Health Teams in all 5 school districts; Health screenings at all 5 schools; Development of at-risk student data base; Counseling and family visits for at-risk students; Search Institute Profiles of Student Life: Attitudes & Behaviors Survey; Mentoring sessions with families; Search Institute Community Asset Building presentation; Disaster/mental health care for farm families; and Voucher system for participants.

The main challenge that was faced in developing and implementing a sustainability plan was funding. We live in a very small, isolated rural community. Transportation is a big factor, as the closest large cities are Kansas City, MO and Des Moines IA, both are 2 hours away. Our school districts are finding it difficult to remain afloat with the continued cuts in education spending by federal and state government. Our main success in this grant came through the use of the case managers who pushed into the 5 school districts with classroom presentations, counseling, and referrals. But without the funding to pay the salaries of these individuals, their services can no longer be used. It all boils down to money, or the lack thereof, and that's why we needed the grant to begin with.

Although we accomplished a great deal in the 3 years that the grant was in operation, the financial obstacles have not been eliminated, and being able to sustain the program is certainly no more of a possibility now than it was when we indicated that we needed grant funding 3 years ago.