This month marks the last push for a team charged with helping to improve Bernalillo County’s behavioral health services. Its final report is due to the County Commission next month and the Behavioral Health Initiative Working Group is meeting weekly to figure out how the state’s most populous county can better meet residents’ needs.
The County Commission passed a budget last week that creates a deputy county manager for behavioral health to oversee both the Behavioral Health Initiative and Cares Campus. In the working group’s meeting Wednesday, member Michael Barndollar proposed establishing a council of volunteers to advise the new administrator.
“This group also works to generate the community input to work with the county on its funding priorities for behavioral health services,” Barndollar explained to his fellow working group members as he presented the proposal.
The group went on to flag county policies dealing with everything from data and funding to housing and the county jail that may need to be addressed if any of the ideas it has generated are enacted.
The working group is made up of current and former medical and social service providers as well as representatives from the county, City of Albuquerque, state and district court. It's facilitated by outside consultant Tim Karpoff.
“We considered whether we ought to have a lot of community input type meetings or other advisors come in and give presentations, but they saw right from the get go, ‘this is a pretty good representative group, so let’s get to work,’” Karpoff said.
He added that the group is not taking public comment at its meetings and decided against inviting public feedback on its report before submitting it to the commission.
The group has identified gaps in the county’s services and barriers to accessing care. It’s set to discuss the budget implications of its recommendations later this month before summarizing 14 weeks worth of work into a comprehensive report.
“It’s a complex issue,” he said. “You need enough time to get something done, but you don’t want to take forever to do it or we’re just going to be kicking the can down the road.”
Karpoff said the group will “almost” meet its June 1 deadline. The Commission will then hold a special meeting to review the report and hear from working group members.
