2017-12-14 Commissioners of Trust Funds Minutes

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UrnF'O'Y J9dlNCOPQO� Town of Reading Meeting Minutes Board --Committee - Commission - Council: Commissioners of Trust Funds Date: 2017-12-14 Building: Reading Town Hall Address: 16 Lowell Street Purpose: General Business Attendees: Members - Present: CLE K 1018 FEB - ► P Time: 7:00 PM Location: Lower Level Conference Room Elizabeth Klepeis, John Daly, Barry Berman and Endri Kume Members -Not Present: Neil Cohen and Kevin Breire Others Present: Richard Holmes and Erica McNamara Minutes Respectfully Submitted By: Endri Kume Topics of Discussion: Mr. Daly called the meeting to order at 7:1 OPM. Meeting Notes Ms. Klepeis made a few small edits to the meeting notes and moved to the motion. There were no discussions. On a motion by Ms. Klepeis, seconded by Mr. Berman the Minutes of the 10/19/17 meeting were approved as amended by a vote of 4-0. RCASA funding request . Ms. McNamara started by summarizing the memo she had sent to the Commissioners and outlined the $4,000 funding request. She provided details about the Interface Referral Services and the impact that the previous $2,000 funding had made. She indicated that 60 Reading residents were assisted. The service helped them access mental health support within 9 months of the program running. RCASA had coordinated with the schools and the town to enhance the Interface database. As a result of this collaboration 22 local mental health clinicians, for vetting and inclusion, were added to the database. Ms. McNamara presented some results for a time period between 11/l/16-12/31/17 and 1/1/17-6/30/17. The reports showed that caller's most pressing concerns for seeking services were "anxiety" and "depression". Mr. Berman made a comment regarding the report results that Ms. McNamara just presented. Mr. Berman mentioned that the Chief of Police presentation to Board of Selectman, at the beginning of the, week, had a chart that showed high volume of mental health calls coming through the dispatch center. Mr. Berman emphasized that this statistics were at the core of.the program and showed a clear need for the services. The presentation went into details how the program worked and Ms. McNamara explained the procedure that William James College had in place when taking phone calls. Ms. McNamara outlined the rational for the $4,000 request to support the contracted services which had a payment due by end of December 2017. One of the statistics that she provided for the rational was: "Currently there is only 1 clinician for 478 patients seeking mental health care in Massachusetts compared to 1 in 128 seeking primary care physicians". Ms. Klepeis asked if the program asked or collected any financial information from the people that were calling to request services. Ms. McNamara explained the questionnaire that callers: get when they call. One of the questions was related to their finances, however the question was a voluntary one and the caller was not obligated to answer. Due to the current contract with William James College it was not suggested to decline services based on how they answered Page 1 1 2013-09-03