Ohio’s Content Working Groups

Content Working Groups are ongoing or new interagency groups focusing on improving services including mental health services. These groups include:

Ohio Family and Children First - Access to Better Care

• Established initiative designed to address mental health needs of kids across multiple systems.
• Includes prevention.
• For more information, contact: Angela Sausser Short
• Online resource: Ohio Family and Children First Web site.

Childhood Trauma Task Force

• Identify strategies to address the needs of children who have been traumatized.
• Promote and infuse the use of trauma-informed care approaches throughout Ohio's child-serving system.
• Reduce the incidence of preventable childhood trauma.
• Reduce the negative impact that results from trauma.
• Provide adequate trauma screening and assessment.
• Provide access to a continuum of trauma-informed services and resources.
• For more information, contact: Mary Jane Frank or Marla Himmeger

Advisory Committee on Mental Illness in the Courts

• Diversion:
  
  • Focus is on impacting systems' change for persons with mental illness at the front end of the criminal justice system.
• Offender Re-Entry:
  • Improve the transition to the community for persons with mental illness who leave jails/prisons.
  • Integration into community mental health system with development of specialized services as needed.
    
• For more information, contact: Sandra Cannon
• Online resource: Advisory Committee on Mental Illness in the Courts
• Online resource: Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction

Governor's Interagency Council on Housing and Homelessness

• Vision: Homelessness will not be an Ohio experience. State and constituent agencies together are responsible for assuring that every Ohioan has access to safe, decent and affordable housing.
• Links to Employment initiative
• For more information, contact: Nancy Nickerson

Mental Health and Older Ohioans

• Address the mental health needs of Older Ohioans across systems.
• For more information, contact: Liz Gitter
• Online resource: Meeting the Mental Health Needs of Older Ohioans

Employment

• Develop local system's plans for how to increase employment for persons with mental illness.
• For more information, contact: Doug Bailey or Lon Herman

Prevention

• Develop a state mental health prevention framework identifying principles, guidelines, benchmarks and state/county implementation strategies.
• For more information, contact: Elnora Jenkins
• Online resource: Ohio's Shared State Agency Prevention Framework

Cultural Competence

• Address issues of culture and rural disparities.
• Develop a cultural competency plan for the Ohio Department of Mental Health, the mental health system and as it relates to mental health consumers served in other public systems.
• For more information, contact: Nancy Nickerson
• Online resource: Multiethnic Advocates for Cultural Competence