Tolland council considers options for mental health services

Jan. 17—TOLLAND — The Town Council will consider making efforts to improve mental health services in town, including a possible partnership with a Vernon nonprofit, after recently receiving recommendations from the town's Mental Health and Substance Abuse Task Force.

The task force, created last year, has been assessing the mental health needs of Tolland residents for several months and brought its first suggestions to the council at a meeting last week. The recommendation would have the town partner with the Hockanum River Community Council, a nonprofit human services agency in Vernon, to provide a prevention and wellness coordinator to assist with engaging and educating residents regarding mental health.

MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

WHAT: The Town Council will consider partnering with the Hockanum River Community Council, a Vernon nonprofit, to provide mental health services to residents in town.

WHY: This comes as a recommendation of the town's Mental Health and Substance Abuse Task Force.

HOW: The nonprofit would provide a prevention and wellness coordinator to work towards increasing resident engagement with services and provide more education about mental health and addiction. The council could use federal COVID-19 relief funds to finance the proposal.

The need for this partnership was apparent after discovering that many Tolland residents are not familiar with what mental health services are available to them, task force Chairwoman Rebecca Moore said during her presentation to the Town Council last week.

Moore also said there is a lack of understanding of mental health and addiction issues among Tolland residents, and many feel reluctant to seek out existing services because they feel ashamed.

"Pretty much every person we spoke to brought up the concept of stigma," Moore said of the canvas of residents, adding that mental health programming already offered by the town's human services department is not well attended.

The amount of time, energy and resources needed to increase Tolland's engagement with mental health services necessitates a prevention and wellness coordinator dedicated to this task, Moore said.

She said the town of Vernon partners with the Hockanum River Community Council to employ a community clinician who works in partnership with the town's youth and human services as well as its public schools to enhance the wellness of the community. She suggested a similar arrangement for Tolland.

"We would want the approach to include creativity ... with the ultimate goal of improving wellness for everyone in Tolland," Moore said, adding that a prevention and wellness coordinator would be a great supplement for the community and the town human services department. She also said that a partnership with the Vernon nonprofit could result in a needs assessment survey of residents to get more specific feedback.

Moore said the task force did not reach out to the Hockanum River Community Council for a quote on how much the position would cost the town, but from her own 12-year experience in the mental health field, it is "not something that is overly expensive."

Town Councilwoman Tammy Nuccio said at the meeting that she would be interested in conducting a survey that would reach the greatest number of residents as possible and suggested using federal COVID-19 relief funds in order to pay for it.

Task force secretary Jacob Marie, who also serves on the Board of Education, said in order to do this survey right, the town "may want to contract with someone because if we don't do it right, we might get some invalid results." Moore said this would most likely come with a partnership with the Hockanum River Community Council.

Town Council Chairman Steven Jones said it would be worthwhile to explore such a partnership, adding, "mental health has been at the forefront for so many people."

Councilwoman Katie Murray said the recommendation to partner with the Community Council was impressive and that she is "excited to see where it goes."

Ultimately, the council voted unanimously to discuss the partnership in a subcommittee dedicated to finding uses for the federal COVID-19 relief funding granted to the town last year.

In the meantime, the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Task Force will continue to find suggestions to bring forward to the council on how to improve Tolland's mental health services.

"These aren't our final recommendations, we aren't dissolving after this," said the task force Vice Chairman Madhu Renduchintala during last week's council meeting.

Ben covers Coventry and Tolland for the Journal Inquirer.

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