Homeless Issues Committee - Regular Meeting

Executive committee to order. Lisa, please call the roll.

Vetcher?

Here.

Traveler?

Traveler, here.

Fries?

Here.

Hustler?

Hustler here.

Welsh? Welsh here.

Yang? Yang? I don't see Yang. Miles?

Miles here.

We have a quorum.

With the quorum being present, we shall move on to the next item, which is consideration of minutes from the August not August. April 16 meeting. Posler moves approval. Moved by Posler. Any discussion, corrections, comments on the meeting minutes? Hearing none. All in favor of approval, aye.

Aye. Aye.

Thank you. Opposed? Aye. That motion carries. We're on to d, referrals of resolutions and ordinance amendments. First item before us is twenty twenty five zero eight thirty five amending chapter 62 of the Dane County Code of Ordinances, increasing fees for marriage licenses and certificates of to terminate termination and domestic partnerships. Welcome, clerk McDonnell. Inform the committee about this item. Sure. So

looking ahead for not just this year, but next year's budget, trying to figure out how to deal with potential cuts coming. There's a a number of strategies. This would be one of them. The marriage license fee hasn't been changed since 2012. So just doing a simple inflation calculation on that $120 number actually should be $1.75.

This has it at $1.50. Right? $1.50. So the thought was, well, why wait if if we're already in the hole? We're beginning to get marriage licenses in earnest right now for the summer and the fall.

Might as well just move forward with increasing that to try to help the county's bottom line. I will I'm also gonna hold a position I have vacant open, but I will, if you pass this, come back for some additional LTE money to help be able to fill some of these managed license slots. So that's the the concept here is that there's no reason to wait for next year's budget to start what I could start right now. Great. Thanks.

Well, questions, for the clerk. Otherwise, we'll go to a motion. So I saw you raise here.

I'm just noticing it's a $100.50 on the actual thing, but then the explanation says a $150. I assume that's a typo.

Yeah. It's it's $1.50. Sorry.

Good catch. I didn't draft it.

And are we Although I do, let me double check that because just so you guys know, a lot

of this money goes to the state. So

the there there's a a chunk goes to the DA's office. The chunk goes to the courts. The chunk goes to the state. So I'm not a 100% sure that's wrong. So why don't I just let's just leave it. I'll talk to Galt and double check it. I think let's leave it right now. Okay?

Alright. So I'll leave it there. If we need to, you can move a correction on port. I think this is correct, actually. But I'll Yeah. And what's in the donation? I that can just be a a typographical correction made later. We'll need a motion for that part. Supervisor Chawla. Yeah. Question for

the clerk. Would you be okay if we amended this to exempt indigent residents from Dane County from these fees?

Yeah. Especially if we're talking Dane County, I think we can accommodate that. Just so you know, we're the only county in the state doing our marriage licenses by Zoom, which we adopted during the pandemic, and we did not go back. There are significant advantages to couples to do that because they don't have to find parking downtown. They don't have to take off work. They can both zoom in from their work. We try to, like, move sometimes earlier in the morning, and we you know, I'm trying to make it a little easier on folks that way. It used to be a lot of people used to get towed. They all come Friday afternoon. Like, that was the time, and we'd have a line.

Now we can control with scheduling. With Zoom, we can say, these are the slots. Someone can take off four day weekend in the summer, and and we just blank them out. So it's been a real advantage. We've also started to get a lot more from around the state.

So particularly the Dells or Door County or the resort areas are are advocating to the people coming to just use Dane County because they can do it by Zoom. So Sauk and Columbia are like, why are our numbers down? I just I don't say anything. But we also are doing more end of life, you know, where they can do it from from, like, cancer center or some different places like that around the state. So but I would be worried if we if we open this up to the whole state. You know? Many are we gonna be doing it? You know, all these different counties, I with no money on it associated with it. So, hopefully, if we just keep the Dane County.

Can I ask a follow-up question, though, to clarify? Because I heard you ask if the fees could be waived for indigent people. Would there be if it's a if if there's some amount that goes to the state, would there be could would you be required to collect some level of fee go to the state?

Or the county would take a hit because we have to pay it.

So,

yeah, that's an excellent point. It's I think it's about $60.

So it go to the state state per license?

Well, it goes out of my office and to other people. Like a court. The idea being there's, like, somebody that goes to family court counseling, so it's sort of like funding a few things that you could say are related to marriage. And so, like, family court cameras, DA's office.

Because we're so also optimistic.

I always say it's a lot

cheaper to get married than

if you get divorced, though. You know? But the so, yeah, that would be a consideration is that I I I don't expect there to be large numbers, but we would we would have to pay that out unless there's unless we say they only have to pay the lowest amount or something for that, something to think about. We could we could revisit this after six months and see what the numbers are. Do it and then see what the numbers are.

Alright. Sorry. Thanks, supervisor Chavez, for me interjecting with the question. Proceed.

Okay.

Yeah. So if we're done with questions, I can make a motion.

Alright. We are if there's if there's no other questions for the clerk. Alright. I'll entertain a motion.

Okay. So I just wanna, do we have to move it and then amend it?

Yes.

Okay. So I'll move

it. And then So I have a motion by Chawala to, recommend adoption of o eight thirty five. Go ahead.

Yeah.

And I'd like to move an amendment, and the amendment language would read, indigent residents from Dane County may apply for a waiver from the statutory fees.

You wanna state what line number that would start at?

And then that would go, it would basically start on line number 19. It would just be a sentence that was added at the end.

So at the very end of the whole thing, essentially?

Yeah.

Do you mind repeating that again?

Yes. It is indigent residents from Dane County may apply for a waiver from these statutory

fees. Supplementary fees? Would it be? Well, by what you're saying, it would be a 100% of the fee.

Yes. Yeah. And I I could speak to the motion. So I'm thinking, like, you know, as the clerk said, why don't we gather some statistics? And if this is cost prohibitive after six months, we can revisit it.

And, also, you know, I think it would be up to the clerk to administer it, like the the the administer Waiver. Yeah. The waiver, there is a petition for waiver of fees and costs a declaration of indigency that we discussed, beforehand, and this is on the Wisconsin circuit court's website. So I think you could just use that since that's already a well established process to do that. So and then I think we just come back to it in six months and see if there is a financial impact from, you know, just waiving the fees for for those who are indigent.

Any comment, discussion on the travel amendment?

So just to be clear, what I would intend to do is is have a a sentence on the marriage license page saying, if you're if you qualify financially and you need a waiver, here's the form you can fill out and attach. Because we have them attach all kinds of things like picture of their birth certificate and some things like that. So I would just plan on using the state form and allow that just the one the courts use.

Would you wanna add in that sentence if you're a Dane County resident and?

Yeah. And on that yeah. Definitely. I would do that. But I just want you guys to know what I would do so you would understand the concept there.

Alright. Any other comment discussion on the Chavla amendment? Alright. Hearing none on the Chavla amendment, all in favor, aye.

Aye.

Opposed, say no. Motion carries. OA 35 is amended by the job law amendment. So on the motion to recommend approval of OA 35 as amended, any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor of the recommendation of approval say aye.

Aye. Aye.

Opposed? The motion carries. It is recommended. So we're on to item two, twenty twenty five resolution four forty five, county executive appointments. So the sorting hat has spoken, and you can see who's the who's appointed to what by the county executive here. So is there a motion?

So moved.

Moved by Chawla. Discussion on the county executive appointments. Alright. Hearing none, all in favor of the recommendation of approval signify by saying aye.

Aye. Aye.

Opposed? That motion carries. And item or resolution four forty five is recommended for Thank you. Adoption. Onto item three, resolution four thirty five, establishing an equity food program for 2026.

So, excuse me, Lisa. I just wanna clarify something real quick on this one. My recollection is that technically this already exists. It's just that because the the name of the department changed and so forth and the governing body that makes the recommendations of approval of the grants, name has changed. We had to recreate it.

The grant program is not accurate. That's that's my recollection of this because it's not really a new program. Okay. We're gonna say that that is correct. So so if you recall in the during the last budget, there was the name change to what is now the office of civil rights. So and that's and that's where this is housed. So alright. Did I did I get it?

I'm sorry. Did I get

a recommendation or a motion for approval? Not yet. Okay. Is is there one? Hello? Alright. I recognize supervisor Posler for the motion to recommend approval. Discussion or questions on this item? K. Hearing none, all in favor of the recommendation of approval, aye.

Aye. Aye.

Opposed? That motion carries, and it is recommended. So we're gonna go on now to presentations we have tonight. Presentation of the UW Madison UCA policy project. We have the student intern. Presentation here for research and assessment of the youth mental health support stabilization in Dane County. So, Lisa, do you wanna introduce our guest?

And Yes. So we have

a first of two University Alliance student interns from UW Madison that the policy outreach and communications team has been working with all semester. This is Ned Eggart, and he's going to present on youth mental health stabilization today. It was a subject that was recommended by Supervisor Ritt, I believe, when we first had the conversation around doing this as a student project. I'll let Ned do further introduction of himself.

Sure. Thank you. So, yeah, my name is Ned Eggert. I'm here presenting my semester's research on youth mental health stabilization in Dane County, and this will be accompanied by two policy recommendations that I would like the board to consider. So just getting started, on a brief overview of what my project will consist of.

I'm gonna start with relevant background information that will include a review of Dane County youth mental health as it stands today, an outline of the scope of my project, and I will identify gaps that I've identified in Dane County's youth mental health policy. I'm going to transition into my case studies. So these are programs and initiatives that I found in my research that have practices that we can use to inform our policy decisions. The three that I have today are mental health one stop shops, sources of strength in safe communities, and the Badger Spill program. Then I'm gonna talk about my two policy recommendations. I'll, of course, outline what they are and plans for how we might go about implementing them. And then I'll wrap things up and open up for questions at the end.

Bro,

I'm not getting it.

It's not working, Carol. I'm just Let me advance it. Okay.

It's a long slide presentation. Very good.

It's not try it again. Okay. It's come

it's I'll try

it.

Okay. Up. It's there's a little lag, I think. Go ahead.

That's fine. Okay. So, yeah, I would like to acknowledge a couple people before I get started. So, of course, Lisa and Sarahi, who work in the office of the board. They are my supervisors for this project, and they were very helpful. Of course, they outline my research and help me make connections within the community. Supervisor Ritt and Heidi Stringer of YouthConnect were my first connections in the community itself, and they helped me develop an understanding of what mental health looks like in Dane County. And doctor Amy Gangle of the UW Madison Department of Political Science for having check ins with me and making sure that I was at a good point with my research throughout the semester. So I would like to extend my thanks to these five before I get started. Okay.

So as for my methodology, how I went about approaching my research, I have this broken up into three steps. So first, I coordinated with Lisa and Sarahi, my project leaders, and together, we reviewed data on mental health in Dane County in an effort to identify gaps and areas for improvement in our policy. Then I, myself, conducted a review of academic literature to see what research based evidence says or suggests might be good policy decisions to make and analyzed a couple of those evidence based strategies that I'll will detail more in my recommendation section. And then I had several semi formal, semi structured interviews and meetings with community members and staff, many of whom were representative of the programs that will show up in my case studies. And after these meetings, I drafted my recommendations.

As for the scope of this project, the main aim that I have is to do the following four things. First, detail Dane County's network of programs for youth mental health support, identify gaps within those programs, highlight models that can be used to fill those gaps, and make sure that my recommendations are realistic, cost effective, and time sensitive. So, yeah, to get started on this, we have to first look at what youth mental health in Dane County looks like. For the record, when I say youth in this presentation, I will be talking about usually people between the ages of 12 and 22. That's what research usually defines as youth.

If I have a statistic that's any more specific than that, I will make sure to let you all know. So, yeah, among youth in Dane County, five point eight percent report being diagnosed with an eating disorder, sixteen point eight percent report being diagnosed with depression, and twenty four point six percent report being diagnosed with some sort of anxiety. On top of that, fifty eight percent of high schoolers say they feel lonely, often or always. Further, eighteen point six percent have considered the idea of suicide, fourteen point nine percent have made an active step towards suicide, and eight point seven percent have reported making some sort of attempt at their own life. Of course, these numbers are very disheartening and reflect not just an existing mental health crisis but one that is worsening over time.

And before I move on, I want us to take a moment and really think about what these numbers mean. I know for me personally, this was really hard for me to wrap my head around, especially as someone who tries to see these numbers not just as numbers but reflective of real lived experiences of youth in Dane County. And so just the idea that you can walk into any given high school in Dane County, and 58 out of the first a 100 kids you'll see will tell you that they feel lonely or nine percent will tell you that they have considered making some sort of attempt at their own life is really just

excuse me.

Sorry. I what's the word I'm looking for? Shows the fact that there's a lot of work to do in terms of youth mental health policy. And until these numbers are as close to zero as possible, that means that us we as policymakers still have work to do. So what does Dane County currently do for youth mental health? Dane County has many high quality programs and initiatives focused on mental health, behavioral health, and youth outreach. About 63 and a half million of the near $1,000,000,000 annual budget are dedicated to these causes. Examples of initiatives that get a lot of intake and funding are Youth Connect, Building Bridges, and the Behavioral Health Resource Center. And this is great. It shows a clear commitment to mental health despite a tight budget.

But, unfortunately, when you think about the numbers on the previous slide, it suggests that this is not yet enough to foster consistent improvement in our collective youth mental health. So a couple times already in this presentation, you've heard me talk about gaps and areas for improvement and really that just means that we do have a lot of great programs here that are great for youth, when you think about the numbers, it suggests that there's something missing. And the three things that I've identified are, first, a lack of information about our programs. The way that I explain this is that it doesn't matter how effective our programs are if youth don't know that they exist. So we need to make an effort to let people know that these programs are here and that they can help.

Second is a lack of accessibility. So even among youth who are aware of our programs and are interested in them, there are a lot of barriers and burdens in their way that prevent them from realistically being able to access these programs. Such burdens are things like transportation whether or not you can physically move yourself to the building that these programs are in things like paperwork, things like insurance, things like upfront costs, and very significantly is stigma and the fear that comes with talking to a mental health professional as a young child. Third is the fact that the programs that we have, although they are great, are generally not preferred by youth when it comes to three alternatives. Those alternatives being talking to a peer, bottling up and keeping it inside, talking to no one, and talking to generative AI programs.

And those three, I consider undesirable outcomes when compared to giving them access to the programs that we have. With that being said, Dane County does have many available resources that are all very high quality, so my recommendations are not suggesting that we change any of the programs that we have more so that we make it easier for the kids that we have to access these programs. With that being said, something that we have to consider with any sort of policy is the idea of intersectionality. I'm sure we've all heard that word before, but just in case you need a reminder, intersectionality is the idea that each person in a community has different sets of values and backgrounds and communities and identities that impact who they are and how they react with policy. So the implementation of new policy will have disproportionate impacts on our diverse residents in Dane County.

For mental health specifically, people who belong to low income communities and minority communities specifically, are at, across the board, at a much higher risk of almost every single youth mental health risk harm, including depression, suicide, self harm, anxiety, undiagnosed needs, and not having access to care. So, of course, intersectionality is something that we want to be acknowledged and be considered of, and I will make considerations for it in my recommendation section. Another thing that we have to talk about in this day and age day and age as it pertains to youth mental health is AI. Research shows that in the twenty twenties, there have been two downward spikes in youth mental health. The more popular one to discuss is in 2020 with, of course, the pandemic and the proliferation of social media amongst younger and younger people.

But what not that many people know is that there was a second one in late twenty twenty two after the mass release of generative AI to the public. And this makes sense if you think about it. AI is very easily accessible as a resource for struggling children. It's right on your computer, you don't have to talk to an adult, there's no paperwork, and there's a lot less fear than there might be when talking to a professional. And this is showing already as up to twelve percent of all youth in America report using AI in some way for mental health support.

Unfortunately, AI mental health support is not optimal for youth mental health support. There are a lot of horror stories. Since AI is malleable and wants people to like using AI, you can dictate AI to kind of give you the response that you were looking for, and so there are horror stories about AI convincing people to go through a self harm or offering to write their suicide note for them. But even for the average youth, it sort of holds as a placeholder or something to make them feel like they're getting professional responses without actually getting the care that they need. So we would like to direct youth away from using AI for mental health and instead direct them towards the resources that we have.

With that being said, I'm going to transition into my case studies. As I mentioned before, these are programs and initiatives that I believe can inform our policy and that I think are important for all of us to consider. The first thing that I wanna talk about is what I call a policy ideal, and this is the idea of a mental health one stop shop. I first heard this term in a conversation with supervisor Ritt, and she explained to me that a one stop shop is a physical location that offers no questions asked, twenty four seven support in Dane County. They also offer grace periods for insurance, paperwork, and finances, and will give care to people regardless of age, ability to show ID, immigration status, or any other reason.

And I consider this a policy ideal because if we didn't have to make considerations for things like budgeting and time and the fact that physical locations are hard to find, I would recommend to you that we put as many of these in Dane County as possible to let people know that no matter who they are or how they're feeling, there is reliable care just a short distance away. With that being said, this is not a part of my official recommendations because they are expensive, take a long time to implement, and physical locations, as you know, are hard to find. However, I would like you to push for these things if possible in the future, if the opportunity presents itself. Good examples of places that are like one stop shops are Anesis Foundational Therapy in Southwest Madison, the Behavioral Health Resource Center, and the Milwaukee Mental Health Clinic. If you're curious, you can look on my report and see more information about those programs.

The first case study I have that's relevant to my recommendations is that of Safe Communities and Sources of Strength. I've grouped these together, a, because the county already does provide small amounts of funding for both of these programs, and, b, because Safe Communities provides funding for Sources of Strength's youth suicide prevention initiatives, so there's a lot of overlap in what they do for our communities. And I want to focus specifically on what they do for harm reduction and youth suicide prevention. Oops. So what they do is they emphasize creating peer networks that have safe conversations.

And what they'll do is they'll take a mental health specialist who is trained in this sort of conversation and get them to go into our physical spaces like schools, like parks, like libraries, and like community centers, and they'll have either day long or weeks long or even month long courses with our youth to encourage them to have supportive conversations with one another about mental health. And also, if someone comes up to a kid with a mental health problem, they can be more appropriately prepared to respond to that. And they emphasize this through what they call supportive moments of change. I think that both of these both of these initiatives are great, and I would support their expansion across the country, but, of course, they're not without challenges. A lack of staffing and funding is something that's persistent among most mental health initiatives in Dane County and across Wisconsin.

Staffing itself is very expensive. Both of these initiatives are not as present in Dane County when compared to Greater Wisconsin. However, I think that these challenges signal an opportunity for Dane County to come in and introduce a similar program ourselves. So my first recommendation is what I call a youth peer support worker program. So how this would work is the county would approach school districts and ask them to opt in or out of this program, and school districts who opt in would have a mental health specialist provided by the county who is sent to their schools to train a grade level at a time to be a youth peer support worker, just like in safe communities and sources of strength.

And this fills gaps in mental health policy because it is present at schools, so there's no transportation burden. This would, of course, be at no cost to the student and research shows that students are and youth are much more likely to appreciate having conversations about mental health with one another than with a teacher or a professional or anyone who's not a trusted adult. Research also suggests that these programs are very promising and very effective at encouraging, welcoming, and the normalizing of conversations around mental health. In terms of best practices, this pulls on the use of peers for support from sources of strength, and I will talk about implementation a little bit more on a further slide. My second case study is that of Badger Spill.

This is a UW Madison student run and student government funded program where students who are feeling upset or distressed for any reason can log on to the website and send out an email asking for advice or support. Within the day, they will receive a response from another student who is a volunteer who fills out around five to 10 emails a semester, and they can offer them that advice or support in a friendly, casual manner. For example, the Badgersville website offers examples of what types of conversations they have and they can be anything as serious to I'm lonely and I don't know what club I want to join to I'm thinking about taking my own life, and students are trained to respond to both of those types of emails in kind. I think that this is a good case study because it leverages the Internet, The emails are anonymous, which is great for lowering stigma and shame, and it's very cost effective because it uses volunteers. The challenges for Badger Spill specifically are that it's limited to the UW student body, so it's not widely available in Dane County.

I'm going to recommend a similar program be implemented in high schools, and of course, these students being 18 to 22 year olds are better able to respond than, say, a 16 year old. And also that not many students are aware of this program. I asked some of my friends just out of curiosity if they knew what Badger's Bill was and across the board I heard no's, which is a shame because I know many of those people could have benefited from the program if they knew about it. Again, I don't think that these challenges are necessarily the fault of the people at Badgersville, but I do think that this signals an opportunity for Dane County to introduce a similar program. So my second recommendation is a school based mental health forum.

How this would work is, again, we would approach school districts to opt in or out, and school districts who opt in would have a website or an app created for them that would be installed on school provided devices. And students at any time of the day could send out one of those emails asking for help or guidance and get a professionally written response. This again fills gaps because it's at no cost, there's no transportation burden, and you don't have to worry about things like paperwork. Research on these is a little more limited because it's a newer concept. However, the research that does exist suggests that this is a very promising policy position to take, especially considering how cost effective it is.

All you really have to do is make a website and hire someone to moderate it. This pulls on the best practices of anonymity using peers and using the Internet from Badger's Bill and this would be implemented in tandem with the first recommendation ideally, which is what I'm going to talk about now. I call this dual implementation. Basically, it's the idea that these two recommendations work best if implemented in tandem and should almost be treated like a bill package, although they would work independently. For example, in recommendation one, the trained youth who would be high school juniors, would become responders on the chat board, and they could receive further training to respond digitally to even younger kids in elementary and middle schools, so that through these two programs alone, we can cover an entire school district with peer based mental health support.

Ideally, the mental health specialist who trains the youth would also be the moderator of the chat board. For recommendation two, youth responders would be credited for volunteer hours and could put this type of thing on their resume, which is why I chose high school juniors because those are people who are applying to colleges, and the chat board could also be used to facilitate check ins between the trainer and the trainee for guidance. For example, a student who just filled out a response could send a screenshot of the response and say, I won't name the student who I had, but I had this conversation with him. Is this an appropriate response? And what this does is it ensures that this program has adult supervision and makes sure that people are using the chatbot appropriately while still emphasizing those peer to peer connections that the chatbot would have.

I want to make two key considerations, one for students outside the school system and two for staffing. These are questions that I've gotten when talking about my recommendations and for good reason. Of course, there are many students outside the school system for whatever reason, whether it be private school or they are ill, they've dropped out, they're unhoused, and we, of course, need to make considerations for these students. I think we can do so by leveraging existing community spaces and the Internet, For example, public libraries, community centers, and buildings where oops. Buildings where mental health programs are already situated could have the mental health chat board downloaded on their laptops.

And if you put a sign, let's say, out of the windows on the Madison Public Library saying that if you're struggling, you can come in here and get a prompt response and guidance, that these kids who are not in the school system would still be accounted for. As for staffing, the first bullet point I have here is about funding. I know that there's a tight budget right now and you can make considerations, and there's a lot of precedent for this of negotiating with school districts to split the cost of the mental health professional, and there are also many nonprofits that we could ask for financial support for. The second two bullet points are about who is actually doing the training. Obviously, it might not be feasible to have a mental health specialist put into every single high school in Dane County, and I recognize that, but I do also think that a way to work around this would be to have a teacher or a school social worker be given a stipend, almost like a sports coach or a club host or a chaperone, and we approach them and we say, If you run the youth chat board and do this training for x amount of time, you will be compensated with x amount of money.

That would help lower the cost of a full time mental health professional, although I do maintain that a full time mental health professional would be ideal. Another way to work around this would be to have one mental health professional per district rather than per school so they could spend a little bit of time at each school. Again, I do have concerns about this one in terms of exacerbating existing inequalities in mental health because if a mental health professional has to divide their time between schools, that means that they won't be able to train a full grade over the course of the school year. And I'm imagining a conversation where the professional asked the teachers for their highest achieving, most responsible students to get the training and the teachers would naturally respond with the students who get the best grades and are in the highest classes. And because of things like track tracking and socioeconomic concerns, these students would disproportionately be white and affluent and I have concerns about what this would mean for the lower income and minority students not feeling like they have a true peer who they can talk to.

Regardless, I do think that we would see positive benefits from all three of these possibilities and I would definitely hear out conversations about all of them. So that's all I have for my recommendations. I would like to conclude by saying that I acknowledge supporting youth mental health is challenging. It takes team teamwork, effort, time, and money. Regardless, it's something that must be addressed.

We need to show our youth how to have healthy conversations with one another and support their peers and their classmates, and we can do so by allowing them a space to speak honestly and openly as well as anonymously if they choose. And I would say to all of you on the board to continue to recommend or to continue to advocate rather, not just for these recommendations, but for youth mental health as a whole, and I hope that you keep it a priority going forward. And now I will open up for questions. Thank you for listening.

Thank you. Ned, thank you very much. So moving on to questions, members with questions. Yeah. Supervisor Yang.

Curious. Have you considered disaggregating the data by race address some of the privilege that you talk about, especially amongst the peers?

Do you mean the data I showed early on?

The data that you showed that there was a significant increase, and specifically and you mentioned the intersectionalities of immigration and economic situations and all of that.

Yeah. Of course. If you look on my report under the policy intersectionality section, there are specific statistics that pertain to each of the groups that I have on my slide show, and research shows that there are disproportionate impacts on every community that I have listed on my slide. So if you disaggregate the data for each of those groups, they do face those burdens more significantly.

Do you know if there has been a significant increase, particularly for certain issues that black and brown people are specifically facing or as compared to their white peers?

I don't have, like, specific data on that. I imagine all of the research that I found would likely agree with the fact that they do face unique and heightened challenges when compared to their white counterparts. Yes.

Because I think, you know, the intersectionality is a a huge component. Right? Understanding where the source of that depression is coming from Mhmm. And how to support that and eliminating barriers that already exist. That's a part of that as well. My other questions are, do you know the Badger's bill? Is it like an MHFA certificate training program?

No. It's it's a it's a much more casual training thing. It's not like you get licensed or stamped or anything like that. They have a Google form and like a day long training thing that you do and it kind of gives you almost like not like a like a respond a b c, like a list of how to respond, but just like a general outline for how most email interactions will go. It it's treated more as, like, a casual assistance hotline. It's not meant to be super it's not it's not like a crisis hotline or anything. It's meant to be more preventative and, like, community based, but it it it will help in those cases.

I'm curious to see if you've had a conversations with MMSD because this issue, obviously, is disconnected to public schools.

Yep.

And there's a lot of, you know, mental health on the rise. But I know that DPI has chosen to kind of attack it in a different way through curriculum. So I don't know if you research social emotional curriculum and social emotional learning. And you mentioned the intersectionality of the pandemic and that kind of really exacerbated a lot of these mental health issues. Right?

And and so I just want was curious to see if you've kind of dug further into a little bit more social emotional curriculum learning that DPI has kind of for made, like, this kind of requirement for a post just to incorporate, if that has had any impact, since the pandemic and and to mental health, or has that not had any impact at all?

Yeah. So during my research, I definitely prioritized Dane County initiatives. I did try to contact people from the Madison Metropolitan School District and did not get a response, so I don't have as much information on that as I would like. However, I do think that regardless of what curriculum is present in our schools right now, the overwhelming concern is that it is not enough. And I do fear that curriculum being something that takes so much time to see the impacts of.

Like, if we have new curriculum for our elementary schoolers, we won't see the positive impacts of that for a decade plus or until even they have children. So I think that a program that targets older, like young adults, like my recommendation, is mainly what I was trying to focus on. However, I definitely would be curious to look into research on things like that, like as they develop, I guess.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Supervisor Chaplin.

Yeah. Thanks for your presentation. This was very, detailed and eye opening, and I think a lot of the recommendations you made, particularly, like, peer to peer support, I think they make a lot of sense in trying to make the county resources more available, to the youth by doing that in a way that's cognizant of costs. And, you know, I think that was, really good in your presentation and in your research that you addressed that to try to leverage existing resources and create connections. The question I have is is when you have, like, the the peer support model where you have, like, sort of a, like, a a chat board area that folks can can access.

What's it like at what point in this? Like, first of all, would that the digital resources be monitored to make sure that their their communication's happening properly? And as part of that training, would, like, the peer support specialists be trained in, like, how to escalate issues and how to properly do that in case they feel like somebody would harm themselves? Like because my concern is, like, it's a lot to put on, you know, a kid in high school who might be having their own issues to try to help out other kids and then to know when to seek help from others in a way that still maintains that trust of that communication that happens between them. So can you, I don't know, offer any observations around that?

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I think, first, the youth who are trained as support workers would be trained on how to respond in those kind of emergency cases. I think that high school juniors are people who are old enough to have that kind of training even though obviously that would take a lot out of them to kind of see stuff like that in real life.

The bigger like, the better answer to your question though that I think is that the chat board is anonymous, but because of things like mandated mandated reporting and stuff like that, whoever is moderating the chat board, which would ideally be the mental health specialist or a teacher or social worker in the school district, would have access to every conversation. And if, like, a red flag was shown like someone was thinking about harming themselves, that anonymity for legal reasons, for reasons of mandated reporting, would be removed. So the teacher, the moderator, whoever it ends up being, is able to see if a student is feeling that way and the same way if a student comes up to a teacher and says, thinking about hurting myself, they have to respond accordingly. That would be an option with the chatbot as well. Thank you.

Go ahead, supervisor Frase.

Yeah, I really like the idea of the peer to peer networks. Think that's an amazing plan. Do you have any metrics on the effectiveness of peer to peer supports compared to other mental health resources?

Yeah. So stuff like that, I figured that I didn't have exactly enough time for that in my presentation. There are statistics on that in my report. I do consider a bunch of other alternatives. I think that the research that I found shows that there's the the peer to peer conversations and the peer to peer support is something that's valuable enough to say that it is necessary. And in a county where it's not present, I think that the implementation of such a program in tandem with, like, a lot of the existing resources that we have means that it's less about comparing which one is more effective and more so that making sure that they're all available.

Go ahead, supervisor Metro.

Have you looked at all on the peer to peer thing again, which I agree is probably, I mean, incredibly useful? There's been a lot some work in the schools over the last years of different school districts have groups in them. I know had one, and then, unfortunately, it lost support and went away. Have you looked at all about any sort of difference between the ones that have them and the ones that don't? Because that is kind of a peer based model.

Yeah. There there are a lot of peer based models that are in Wisconsin and Dane County. NAMI is one of them. Sources and Strength and Safe Communities are also one of them. In my report, there's a cool map that places, like, pins on schools that have different types of youth mental health programs.

And what I noticed is that those pins were really lacking in Dane County. If you look around the surrounding areas, there are yellow pins at every school for sources of strength in some communities. There's purple pins for NAMI in a lot of communities, and there are not nearly as many pins in Dane County. So I think that's why I thought it was a good opportunity for Dane County to introduce that kind of program ourselves, but I would a 100% support using NAMI in our schools or sources of strength in our schools. They do do similar work.

I

But do do you know of any anyone who's looked to see if there's a difference in some of those reported issues between schools that have them and don't?

Yeah. Yeah. So, that's was a part of my research on the case study of sources of strength. So it youth peer support worker is an academic term. It's abbreviated to YPSW a lot and that's where I pull a lot of my research from. There's not research, at least that I could find, that was specific to Dane County or Wisconsin, but the research that covers The United States shows that those youth peer support workers or youth peer support worker programs are preferred compared to a whole list of other programs. And those are I believe I have those cited. I could pull them up, I'm sure. Does that answer your question?

Yeah. In fact, I just found the paragraph. Okay.

Anyone anyone else with a question? And we have a link in our agenda. That's to the full report. Right? Mhmm. The final. Yep. So we have all that available to us. Thank you very much, Ned. Thank you. Well done. Okay. That is the last item on our agenda outside of well, we got future meeting items. Nate will be meeting next ahead of the next board meeting on June 4. We'll start at 05:00 because we do have a committee of the whole at 6PM that evening.

So is there are there any registrants for public comment for items not on the agenda? No. Thank you. Any other such business allowed by law? If not, is there a motion to adjourn? Moved by Cavallo to adjourn. Everybody in favor of adjournment, aye.

Aye.

Opposed? I'm sorry. Thank you. We are adjourned. See you at the board meeting.