By Eric Stock
BLOOMINGTON – McLean County’s efforts to improve mental health care has earned it a seat at the table for a U.S. Department of Justice initiative.
County officials have been taking part in two teleconferences each week for five months with members of the White House’s Data Driven Justice Initiative, an effort to provide better care fore the mentally ill. The imitative aims to expand diversion of people with mental illness from emergency room visits and incarceration.
“What we’ve learned and I think now recognize is that this just isn’t a local problem,” McLean County Administrator Bill Wasson said. “I wasn’t sure about that three years ago.”
Wasson said this initiative demonstrates the county has many of the assets needed to provide care for the mentally ill, but that it requires coordination between health care, law enforcement locally and technology firms that can help streamline that communication to give first responders the information they need to assist the mentally ill.
“We have relatively unique assets in place and we had been engaged in the process,” Wasson said. “I think those are the reasons they identified McLean County as a good jurisdiction to involve in the process.”
Eric Stock can be reached at eric.stock@cumulus.com.
