Press Release: The Mental Health Task Force of Northwest Florida is diving into the details this quarter.
Through the collaborative work of the Task Force, a contract has been made with Ernst & Young to conduct Strategic Planning and develop an action plan and define an ideal end state for the continuity of support and closure of gaps within the mental wellness and behavioral health system in our area.
The full Task Force will be meeting on January 13 to hear from the team at EY with their preliminary findings and to participate in break-out sessions to “dig a little deeper” The EY contract will present their final report at the May meeting of the Mental Health Task Force of Northwest Florida.
To learn more about the Mental Health Task Force of Northwest Florida, visit mentalhealthtaskforce.org.
We don’t know where the meeting will be held or when. This press release was sent out after 5 p.m. yesterday.
Is Janice Gilley running the mental health task force? Without seeing the procurements, I couldn’t know for sure, but the backdoor non-transparency and big-name consulting sure have all the earmarks.
Bringing in E&Y will be helpful if the various agencies and entities who are supposed to be viable components of a true coordination of services are actually interested in contributing in earnest, to their full potential. And perhaps whoever is calling the shots feels that something on paper from a leading firm will help release federal funding. But if the contract and asks of E&Y aren’t set up properly, and aren’t sufficient–like much of Janice’s consulting contracts during her time as County Administrator–this is nothing but a big waste of money. Such as the big-name consultancy that she hired to assess the open government software without asking them to analyze government transparency compliance–just a whopping miss that pretty much assured the spend was moot. (Sure made it look like she was doing something, though.)
Who knows–they’d tell us, but they’d have to kill us. Wouldn’t want that pesky press and public getting in the way of all the progress they’re making. In the meantime, I’ll just keep encouraging people who are desperate for adequate mental health care and/or substance abuse counselling to obtain it by moving to a place where the hospitals and primary mental health providers actually give a crap, if they possibly can. And where the service providers with the contract for indigent care actually start providing some.